Little Lo Lost
by tua33915
Summary: This story is a fairy tale. Like all fairy tales, between once upon a time and they lived happily ever after, things go horribly, horribly wrong. Marriage really is 'til death do us part…one way or another. [CLOIS]. AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Little Lo Lost**  
Author: **Sherry  
**Pairing: **Clois – always and forever. A/N: I don't do Clana drama, so in this AU story Jonathan Kent is still alive because Clark was never obsessed with the Pink Princess and none of that crap ever happened after season 3.  
**Rating: **R  
**Warnings: **This story is not sunshine, lollipops, rainbows everywhere and unicorns running through meadows. Characters will seem out of character…because they are. It's why I wanted to write this. Switch it up a bit.  
**Spoilers: **Only if you've read the book this is based on. This isn't an original idea. Borrowed from a novel (Thank you Gillian – all rights belong to you).**  
Short Summary: **This story is a fairy tale. Like all fairy tales, between once upon a time and they lived happily ever after, things go horribly, horribly wrong. Marriage really is 'til death do us part…one way or another.

**PART ONE  
BOY LOSES GIRL**

**CLARK KENT  
THE DAY OF**

When I think of my wife, I always think of her mouth. The shape of it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her in a cornfield off of route 31, it was the wide-open, slack-jawed, gaping mouth I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the shape of it, angles of it. As you get older, your upper lip drops and you see less of your upper teeth. At the same time, your lower lip sags, exposing more of your lower teeth. Shakespeare's reference to older people as "long in the tooth" describes this drop. I could not imagine the woman to whom that mouth belonged ever being considered long in the tooth. Her jaw was level. If she took a wide Popsicle stick and bit on it, the stick would not tilt. The width of her mouth was about 1.6 times the width of the bottom of her pert little nose, a measurement known as the Golden ratio. If you dropped lines down from the inner part of her hazel irises, her mouth would fit between those lines. Her upper front teeth were visible below her upper lip for four millimeters and her lower teeth were not visible when her lips were open. Her upper teeth also overlapped her lower teeth by one millimeter. Her mouth was a moist, soft, pink Golden-ratio-proportioned gentle curve that peaked into the loveliest Cupid's Bow I'd ever seen. She had what the Victorians would call a _finely shaped mouth._ You could imagine the teeth and jaw on the skull of her long-buried lovely bones quite easily.

I'd know her mouth anywhere.

And what comes out of it. Words, phrases, sentences. Touched with humor, wrapped in wit, bathed in sarcasm and drenched in truth. And where all that loud verbosity originates from. I think of that, too: her mind. Her brain, all those corkscrews, and her thoughts shuttling through those curlicues like fast, frantic centipedes. Or cockroaches. Like a child, I envision opening her skull, unraveling her convoluted brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. _What are you thinking, Lois?_ The question I've asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the one person who could answer. I suppose these questions are a dark storm cloud over every marriage, awaiting that final roll of thunder and strike of lightning to open up and rain hellfire and brimstone from the sky: _What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?_

~~..~~

My eyes jerked open at exactly six a.m. This was no bird-like fluttering of the lashes, no gentle blink toward alert awareness. The awakening was mechanical, automated, lifeless, cold. A spooky Charlie McCarthy click of the lids: The world is black as pitch and then, _showtime!_ 6-0-0 the clock said – in my face, first thing I saw. 6-0-0. It felt strange. Different. I rarely woke at such an oddly rounded linear time. I was a man of jagged risings, blurred lines: 9:34, 11:21, 8:17. My life was alarmless.

At that exact moment, 6-0-0, the sun mounted over the skyline of oak trees, announcing its abounding summer vengeful-God existence. Its reflection flared across the shiny cornstalks and illuminated our brick colonial townhouse, a long, blaring finger aimed at me, peaking through our plaid flannel bedroom curtains. Accusing: _You have been seen. You will be seen.  
_  
I wallowed in bed, which was our Metropolis apartment bed in our new Smallville house, which we still called _the new house_, even though we'd been back here for nearly two years and I grew up here and have lived here nearly my entire life. Lois even lived here for six years before we came back. But she never talks about that anymore. Not now. It's a rented house right along the Kansas River, the river I was pummeled and catapulted into by a speeding Porsche when I was a freshman in high school and my life as I knew it was over, changed forever, a house that screams Wichita Suburban Nouveau Riche, the kind of place I aspired to as a kid from my Hickory Lane yellow farmhouse side of town, the farm that I sold when we were given the deed as a wedding gift from my mom. The kind of house that is immediately recognizable and unfortunately familiar: a generically grand, unchallenging, new, new, new townhouse that my wife would – and did – detest with the passion of a thousand burning suns that even my megawatt smile and puppy dog eyes could not win over.  
_  
_"Should I remove my soul before I come inside?" Her first line upon arrival. It had been a compromise: Lois demanded we rent, not buy, in my little Kansas hometown, in her firm hope that we wouldn't be stuck here long. But the only houses for rent were clustered in this failed development: a miniature ghost town of bank-owned, recession-busted, price-reduced McMansions, a neighborhood that closed before it ever opened. It was a compromise, but Lois didn't see it that way, not in the least. To Lois, it was a punishing whim on my part, a nasty, selfish twist of the knife. I would drag her, caveman-style, back to a town she had aggressively avoided since I made the decision to sell the farm without her, and make her live in the kind of house she used to mock. I suppose it's not a compromise if only one of you considers it such, but that was what our compromises tended to look like these days. One of us was always angry.

Lois, usually.

Do not blame me for this particular grievance, Lois. The Smallville Grievance. Blame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents, blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the Internet. I used to be a reporter. I was a reporter who wrote about current events and city crimes and local politics. And the occasional kitten adoption fair. Back when people read things on paper, back when anyone cared about what I thought. I'd arrived in Metropolis in the late '00s, the last gasp of the glory days, although no one knew it then. Metropolis was packed with reporters, real reporters, because there were newspapers, real newspapers, loads of them. This was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the corner of the publishing world – throw some kibble at it, watch it dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won't kill us in the night. Think about it: a time when newly graduated college kids, or even college dropouts, muffin-peddling or otherwise, could come to Metropolis and _get paid to investigate and write about it_. We had no clue that we were embarking on careers that would vanish within the decade. Lois caught on. She even talked me into auditioning for a local news TV morning show. But apparently blondes test better with morning viewers.

I had a job for eleven years and then I didn't, it was that fast. All around the country, newspapers began shuttering, succumbing to a sudden infection brought on by the busted economy. Reporters (my kind of reporters: ruminative thinkers, people whose brains don't work quick enough to blog or link or tweet, basically old, stubborn blowhards) were through. We were like women's hat makers or buggy-whip manufacturers: Our time was done. Three weeks after I got cut loose, Lois lost her job, such as it was. (Now I can feel Lois looking over my shoulder, smirking at the time I've spent discussing my career, my misfortune, and dismissing her experience in one sentence. That, she would tell you, is typical. _Just like Smallville_, she would say. It was a refrain of hers: _Just like Smallville to_ … and whatever followed, whatever was _just like me_, was bad. Because whenever she called me Smallville was bad. And the inference: _Just like this town. Just like her life_.) Two jobless grown-ups, we spent weeks wandering around our Metropolis penthouse in socks and pajamas, ignoring the future, strewing unopened mail across tables and sofas, eating ice cream at ten a.m. and taking thick afternoon naps. While the crime rate climbed. And so many somebodies weren't saved.

Because _he_ wasn't out there.

Because _she_ stopped believing in him.

Then one day the phone rang. My twin sister was on the other end. Chloe had moved back home after her own Metropolis layoff a year before – the girl is one step ahead of me in everything, even sh!++y luck. Chloe, calling from good ole Smallville, Kansas, and as I listened to her voice, I saw her at age twelve, when we first met, with a yellow buttercup cap of hair and overall shorts, sitting in my barn loft, her body slouched over like an old pillow, her skinny legs dangling over the wooden landing, watching her flip-flops hang precariously between the toes of her fish-white feet, so intently, utterly self-possessed even as a child. She had just given me my first kiss so that we could get it out of the way and be friends. Little did we know then that LuthorCorp would make a casualty out of Chloe's father Gabe the following year and leave her basically orphaned since Belle Reeve had, for all intents and purposes, claimed her mother Moira years prior. Chloe had an uncle Sam, her mother's brother, but the traveling soldier was too busy being an army General to be a father to his own two daughters, let alone a third teenage girl. So my parents obtained Chloe's uncle's legal permission to adopt her. Chloe Elaine Sullivan became Chloe Sullivan Kent. And my best friend became my sister. Being joined at the hip lead kids at school to christen us Siamese twins. Our first innocent peck on the lips we took to jokingly calling twincest. Even our names were conjoined. We became Chlark.

Chloe's voice was warm and crinkly even as she gave this cold news: Our indomitable ex-US Senator mother was dying. Our ex-State Senator dad was nearly gone – his (nasty) mind, his (miserable) heart, both murky as he meandered toward the great gray beyond. But it looked like our mother would beat him there. About six months, maybe a year, she had. I could tell that Chloe had gone to meet with the doctor by herself, taken her studious notes in her slovenly handwriting, and she was teary as she tried to decipher what she'd written. Dates and doses.

"Well, fµ©k, I have no idea what this says, is it a nine? Does that even make sense?" she said, and I interrupted. Here was a task, a purpose, held out on my sister's palm like a plum. I almost cried with relief.

"I'll come back, Chlo. We'll move back home. You shouldn't have to do this all by yourself."

She didn't believe me. I could hear her breathing on the other end.

"I'm serious, Chlo. Why not? There's nothing here."

A long exhale. "What about _our_ cousin?"

A long sigh. "She's not _our_ cousin. She's _your _cousin." I had been having this same argument with her for nearly twenty years. Ever since high school. Here I go again. _On my own…going down the only road I've ever known. _Damn it Lois not now.

"And your wife. Which makes her my sister-in-law? Sister-cousin-in-law? Cousin-sister-in-law? I can never keep that straight. Maybe because it's so twisted and convoluted and supposed to happen in Kentucky not Kansas." Another long exhale.

Another long sigh. My sister never got over the fact that I fell in love, began dating and eventually married her favorite cousin. Their Chlo-Lo connection was forever severed the moment I laid my cerulean blue eyes on her hazel ones. Lois Joanne Lane eventually became Lois Lane Kent. And my sister's cousin became my wife. Not that I ever admitted in the beginning that she was the one and she always will be. She was bossy, she was stuck up, she was rude…I couldn't stand her. But the best ones always start that way.

At least that's what I was told once.

_What about Lois?_ That is what I didn't take long enough to consider. I simply assumed I would bundle up my Metropolis wife with her Metropolis interests, her Metropolis pride, and remove her from her Metropolis friends – leave the frantic, thrilling futureland of Metropolis behind – and transplant her permanently to a little town on a river in Smallville, and all would be fine.

I did not yet understand how foolish, how optimistic, how, yes, _just like Smallville_ I was for thinking this. The misery it would lead to.

"Lois will be fine. Lo …" Here was where I should have said, "Lo _loves_ Mom." But I couldn't tell Chloe that Lois loved our mother, because even after living with us for over a year when we were teenagers and working as my mom's chief of staff after my dad's heart attack made her Kansas' new State Senator, Lois still barely knew our mother. Their meetings after Kansas State Senator Martha Kent became US Senator Martha Kent had left them both baffled. Lois would dissect the conversations for days after – "And what did she mean by …," – as if my mother were some ancient peasant tribeswoman arriving from the tundra with an armful of raw yak meat and some buttons for bartering, trying to get something from Lois that wasn't on offer.

Lois didn't care to know my family once my father had a heart attack and never recovered and my mother took Senator Burke's seat as US Senator from Kansas and started to spend more time in Washington, away from the farm and at "political functions" with Lionel Luthor. She hadn't wanted anything to do with my hometown in years, and yet for some reason, I thought moving home would be a good idea.

~~..~~

My morning breath warmed the pillow, and I changed the subject in my mind. Today was not a day for second-guessing or regret, it was a day for doing. Downstairs, I could hear the return of a long-lost sound: Lois making breakfast. Banging wooden cupboards (rump-thump!), rattling containers of tin and glass (ding-ring!), shuffling and sorting a collection of metal pots and iron pans (ruzz-shuzz!). A culinary orchestra tuning up, clattering vigorously toward the finale, a cake pan drumrolling along the floor, hitting the wall with a cymballic crash. Something impressive was being created, probably a crepe, because crepes are special, and today Lois would want to cook something special.

It was our five-year anniversary.

I walked barefoot to the edge of the steps and stood listening, working my toes into the plush wall-to-wall carpet Lois detested on principle, as I tried to decide whether I was ready to join my wife. Lois was in the kitchen, oblivious to my hesitation. She was humming something melancholy and familiar. I strained to make it out – a folk song? a lullaby? – and then realized it was the theme to M*A*S*H. _Suicide is painless._ I went downstairs.

I hovered in the doorway, watching my wife. Her dark mocha-colored hair was pulled up, the hank of ponytail swinging cheerful as a jumprope, and she was sucking distractedly on a burnt fingertip, humming around it. She hummed to herself because she was an unrivaled botcher of lyrics of anything not Whitesnake-related. When we were first dating, a Genesis song came on the radio: "She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah." And Lois crooned instead, "She takes my hat and puts it on the top shelf." When I asked her why she'd ever think her lyrics were remotely, possibly, vaguely right, she told me she always thought the woman in the song truly loved the man because she put his hat on the _top _shelf. I knew I liked her then, really liked her, this girl with an explanation for everything.

There's something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.

Lois peered at the crepe sizzling in the pan and licked something off her wrist. She looked triumphant, wifely. If I took her in my arms, she would smell like wild cherries and hot fudge.

When she spied me lurking there in Snoopy boxers, my hair in full Heat Miser spike, she leaned against the kitchen counter and said, "Hell-ooooo, sailor."

Bile and dread inched up my throat. "What'd you just say?"

A smirk of moist pink lips, a roll of sparkling hazel eyes, a swing of milk chocolate ponytail as she turned back to her anniversary crepes. "Nothing. You should get your hearing checked. Hot stuff."

Bile and dread pooled in my mouth. "What are you doing here?"

An arching of naked sun-kissed back, a rising of beautiful braless breasts, a straining of perky rosy nipples against her thin halter top. "Standing in the shadow of six-and-a-half feet of handsome."

How long had it been since I caressed those gorgeous breasts in my hands? Since I sucked those hard sweet nipples into my mouth? I thought to myself: _Okay, go._

~~..~~

I was very late getting to work. My sister and I had done a foolish thing when we both moved back home. We had done what we always talked about doing. We opened a bar. We borrowed money from Lois to do this, eighty thousand dollars from the trust fund her mother Ella had left when she died, which was once nothing to Lois but by then was almost everything. I swore I would pay her back, with interest. I would not be a man who borrowed from his wife – I could feel my dad twisting his lips at the very idea. _Well, there are all kinds of men_, his most damning phrase, the second half left unsaid, _and you are the wrong kind_.

But truly, it was a practical decision, a smart business move. Lois and I both needed new careers; this would be mine. She would pick one someday, or not, but in the meantime, here was an income, made possible by the last of Lois's trust fund. Like the McMansion I rented, the bar featured symbolically in my childhood memories of the Wild Coyote– a place where only grown-ups go, and do whatever grown-ups do. Maybe that's why I was so insistent on buying it after being stripped of my livelihood. It's a reminder that I am, after all, an adult, a grown man, even though I lost the career that made me all these things. I won't make that mistake again: The once plentiful herds of reporters and writers would continue to be culled – by the Internet, by the recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or play video games or electronically inform friends that, like, _rain sucks_! But there's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.

Our bar is a corner bar with a haphazard, patchwork aesthetic. Its best feature is a massive Victorian backbar, dragon heads and angel faces emerging from the oak – an extravagant work of wood in these sh!++y plastic days. The remainder of the bar is, in fact, sh!++y, a showcase of the shabbiest design offerings of every decade: an Eisenhower-era linoleum floor, the edges turned up like burnt toast; dubious wood-paneled walls straight from a '70s home-porn video; halogen floor lamps, an accidental tribute to Chloe's '00s Met-U dorm room. The ultimate effect is strangely homey – it looks less like a bar than someone's benignly neglected fixer-upper. And jovial: We share a parking lot with the local bowling alley, and when our door swings wide, the clatter of strikes applauds the customer's entrance.

We named the bar The Bar. "People will think we're ironic instead of creatively bankrupt," my sister reasoned.

Yes, we thought we were being clever Metropolitans – that the name was a joke no one else would really get, not get like we did. Not meta-get. We pictured the locals scrunching their noses: Why'd you name it _The Bar_? But our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and a pink jogging suit, said, "I like the name. Like in _Breakfast at Tiffany's_ and Audrey Hepburn's cat was named Cat."

We felt much less superior after that, which was a good thing.

I pulled into the parking lot. I waited until a strike erupted from the bowling alley – _thank you, thank you, friends_ – then stepped out of the car. I admired the surroundings, still not bored with the broken-in view: the squatty blond-brick post office across the street (now closed on Saturdays), the unassuming beige office building just down the way (now closed, period). The town wasn't prosperous, not anymore, not by a long shot: a quaint little 1950s town that bloated itself into a basic midsize suburb and dubbed it progress. Still, it was where my dad grew up and where he and my mom raised me from about age three and Chloe from age thirteen, so it had some history. Mine, at least.

As I walked toward the bar across the concrete-and-weed parking lot, I looked straight down the road and saw the river. That's what I've always loved about our town: We aren't built on some safe bluff overlooking the Kaw, the Kansas River – we are _on_ the Kaw. I could walk down the road and step right into the sucker, an easy three-foot drop, and be on my way to the southwestern-most part of the Missouri River drainage and from there into the northwestern-most part of the mighty Mississippi River drainage and then, I don't know, Tennessee I guess. Every building downtown bears hand-drawn lines from where the river hit during the Flood of '61, '75, '84, '93, '07, '08, '11. And so on.

The river wasn't swollen now, but it was running urgently, in strong ropy currents. Moving apace with the river was a long single-file line of men, eyes aimed at their feet, shoulders tense, walking steadfastly nowhere. As I watched them, one suddenly looked up at me, his face in shadow, an oval blackness. I turned away.

I felt an immediate, intense need to get inside. By the time I'd gone twenty feet, my neck bubbled with sweat. The sun was still an angry eye in the sky. _You have been seen._

My gut twisted, and I moved quicker. I needed a drink. Even if it didn't affect me.


	2. Chapter 2

**LOIS LANE  
SEPTEMBER 29, 2004**

– **DIARY ENTRY** –

Omigod! I've got to forward this diary entry to my high school guidance counselor who thought I was a lesbian because I always wore jeans and kicked ass at guitar hero. Check it out Mrs. Kreitzman. Who's sorry now biatch! I am grinning a ginormous Elian Gonzalez adopted-orphan Kool-Aid smile as I write this. I am mortified at how totally retarded I'm acting right now, like some Technicolor comic panel of a tween girl gabbing on the phone with my hair in pigtails, blowing a big Bazooka bubble, the bubble above my head saying: _I met a boy!_

But I did. This is a technical, factual truth. I met a boy, a super smart, sarcastically funny, adorably sweet, gorgeous Greek god-like Adonis of a sexy cool-ass guy. Let me set the scene Mrs. Kreitzman, because it deserves setting for posterity. Just ignore all the primary colors and the plaid. Nobody's perfect.

Chloe, my favorite cousin – not really cousin, more like semi-sister, more sister than Lucy cousin, the kind of cousin you can't cancel on – has talked me into going out to Smallville, to one of her writers' parties. Now, I like a writer party, I like writers, Chlo's a writer, I am the child of writers - my mother a writer from wanting to hold onto my childhood, my father a writer from wanting to hold onto my mother. I am NOT a writer. Journalism? Ugh! Kill me first. Even if I could spell, the last thing I'd wanna do is spend my time in a newsroom. With my luck, I'd probably end up across the desk from the most bumbling reporter on the masthead. You know I took this career test in some magazine, it said that my perfect job would be a radio disc jockey. That makes sense. I talk enough so there wouldn't be any dead air. I couldn't imagine scribbling that word – WRITER – or even worse – REPORTER - any time a form, questionnaire, or document asks for my occupation. Ever since seeing _Speed_, I concoct these personality quizzes in my spare time. They're not exactly the Great Issues of the Day, but I think it's fair to say I dabble a bit in the family business. I'm using this journal to get better: to hone my skills, to collect details and observations. To show don't tell and all that other writery crap. (_Elian Gonzalez Adopted-orphan Kool-Aid smile_, I mean, that's not bad, come on.) But really, I do think my quizzes alone qualify me on at least an honorary basis. Right?

_Pop Quiz Hot Shot: At a party you find yourself surrounded by genuine talented writers, hired for summer internships at high-profile, respected Metropolitan newspapers. You merely write quizzes for the hell of it and to amuse yourself. When someone asks what kind of stuff you write, What do you do? What do you do?:_

a) Get embarrassed and say, "I just write quizzes, it's totally retarded!"  
b) Go on the offense: "I come from a family of writers, but I'm considering something more challenging and worthwhile – like investigative reporting"  
c) Take pride in your accomplishments: "I write personality quizzes using the knowledge gleaned from my lifetime of traveling the globe as an Army Brat – oh, and fun fact: I am the inspiration for a beloved children's-book series, I'm sure you know it, _Loquacious Lois_? Yeah, so suck it, Scooby-Douche!

_Answer: C, totally C_

~~..~~

Anyway, the party is being thrown by one of Chloe's good friends who had a summer photojournalism internship at the _Daily Planet_, and is very funny, according to Chloe. I worry for a second that she wants to set us up: I am not interested in being set up. I need to be ambushed, caught unawares, like some sort of wild, savage love-sasquatch. I'm too self-conscious otherwise. I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I'm obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I've basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I'm dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There's jazz hands and lots of teeth and a bigger gay fan base than gay animals on Big Al's Big Gay Boat Ride.

But no, I realize, as Chloe gushes on about her photographer friend: _She likes him_. Good.

We walk into an old movie theater-turned Egyptian–themed coffee shop, The Falcon, or something, climb a flight of stairs to the apartment Chlo's friend who's in Paris rents and enter a whoosh of body heat and writerness: many black-framed glasses and mops of hair; faux western shirts and heathery turtlenecks; black wool pea-coats flopped all across the couch, puddling to the floor.

A clump of guys hovers near a card table where all the alcohol is set up, tipping more booze into their red Solo cups after every few sips, all too aware of how little is left to go around. I nudge in, aiming my plastic cup in the center like a flask that needs refilling, get a clatter of ice cubes and a splash of vodka from a sweet-faced guy wearing a Dungeons and Dragons T-shirt.

A lethal-looking bottle of green-apple liqueur, the host's ironic purchase, will soon be our fate unless someone makes a booze run, and that seems unlikely, as everyone clearly believes they made the run last time. It is a September party, definitely, everyone still glutted and sugar-pissed from the Labor Day holiday, hell some even still nursing a hangover from the 4th of July, lazy and irritated simultaneously. A party where people drink too much and pick cleverly worded fights filled with puns and without hanging participles. We've already talked to one another at a thousand summer parties, we have nothing left to say, we are collectively bored, but we don't want to go back into the chilly Kansas Indian Summer cold night; our bones still ache from the never-ending gravel roads along endless cow pastures and about a billion stalks of corn.

I have lost Chloe to her host-beau – they are having an intense discussion in a corner of the kitchen, the two of them hunching their shoulders, their faces toward each other, the shape of a heart. Good. I so heart them. I think I'll ship them. My own personal Bennifer or Brangelina. I'll call them Chimmy. I think about eating to give myself something to do besides standing in the center of the room, smiling like the new kid in the lunchroom. But almost everything is gone. Some potato-chip shards sit in the bottom of a giant Tupperware bowl. A supermarket deli tray full of hairy carrots and gnarled celery and a suspiciously semeny dip sits untouched on a coffee table. I am doing my _What If_ thing, my personal silent impulse fantasy thing: What if I leap from the theater balcony right now? What if I tongue the homeless man across from me on the Metro subway in Suicide Slums? What if I sit down on the floor of this party by myself and eat everything on that deli tray, including the Hidden Valley Spunk? "I'm gonna eat this entire party platter, even if I have to do it alone."

"You're not alone. Please don't eat anything in that area," he says. It is _him_ (bum bum BUMMM!), but I don't yet know it's _him_ (bum-bum-bummm). His voice isn't familiar to me yet. And it sounds different from before…from the other night. I know it's a guy who will talk to me, he wears his cockiness like an ironic T-shirt, but it fits him better. He is the kind of guy who carries himself like he gets laid a lot, a guy who likes women, a guy who would actually fµ©k me properly. I would like to be fµ©ked properly! From what I saw the other night when I couldn't just look at his face, he's the perfect male specimen for the job. My dating life seems to rotate around three types of men: preppy Ivy Leaguers who believe they're characters in a Fitzgerald novel; slick Wall Street wannabes with money signs in their eyes, their ears, their mouths; and sensitive smart-boys who are so self-aware that everything feels like a joke. The Fitzgerald fellows tend to be ineffectively porny in bed, a lot of noise and acrobatics to very little end. The finance guys turn rageful and flaccid. The smart-boys fµ©k like they're composing a piece of math rock: This hand strums around here, and then this finger offers a nice bass rhythm … I sound quite slutty, don't I Mrs. Kreitzman? Pause while I count how many … just kidding. No need to break out the guidance and counseling. I don't need the theme from Jeopardy to play while I recall my hit list. Four. Not bad. I've always thought five was a solid, reasonable number to end at.

"Seriously," Number 5 continues. (Ha!) "Back away from the tray. Jimmy has up to three other food items in the refrigerator. I could make you an olive with mustard. Just one olive, though."

_Just one olive, though._ It is a line that is only a little funny, but it already has the feel of an inside joke, one that will get funnier with nostalgic repetition. I think: _A year from now, we will be walking along the Kansas River at sunset and one of us will whisper, "Just one olive, though," and we'll start to laugh._ (Then I catch myself. Where the hell did that come from? If he knew I was doing _a year_ _from now_ already, he'd _run_ _faster than a speeding bullet_ and I'd be obliged to cheer him on. Move back, way back, far, far away from the whackadoodle. She's not worthy to be in your presence.)

Mainly, I will admit, I smile because he's gorgeous. Distractingly gorgeous, the kind of looks that make your eyes pinwheel, that make you want to just address the 800 lb. elephant in the room – "You know you're gorgeous, right?" – and move on with the conversation. I bet dudes hate him: He looks like the rich-boy villain in a '80s teen movie – the one who bullies the sensitive misfit, the one who will end up with a pie in the puss, the whipped cream wilting his upturned collar as everyone in the cafeteria silently cheer and do a slow clap. Except his Calvin Klein's are Wrangler and his silk boxers are flannel. If he's even wearing boxers. Maybe he's going commando. Like the other night.

He doesn't act like the villain of the story, though. And he seems to wanna play this game where we're pretending this is the first time we've met. Okay farm boy, I'll bite. His name is Clark Kent. I love it. It makes him seem nice, and regular, which he is. I've heard about how nice and regular he is for years…from another Kent. When he tells me his name, I say, "Now, that's a real name. Really…familiar." His green, wait, no…blue…ish green, ahhh hell, aquamarine eyes brighten, he flashes me his megawatt smile and reels off some line: "Clark's the kind of guy you can drink a beer with, the kind of guy who doesn't mind if you puke in his truck. Clark!"

_Capable Clark._

He makes a series of awful puns. I catch three fourths of his movie references. Two thirds, maybe. (Note to self: _Rent To Kill A Mockingbird _next weekend instead of _Die Hard_ or _Jaws._) He refills my drink without me having to ask, somehow ferreting out one last cup of the good stuff. He has claimed me, placed a flag in me: _I was here first, she's mine, mine._ After the other night, I wasn't sure where we stood. It feels nice, after my recent series of nervous, respectful post-feminist men, to be a territory. The US Virgin Islands sans virgin. He has a great smile, a cat's smile. He should cough out yellow Tweety Bird feathers, the way he smiles at me. He doesn't ask what kind of stuff I write, which is fine, which is a change. (I'm _Loquacious Lois_, did I mention?) He talks to me in his river-wavy Midwestern accent; he informs me that Kansas is a magical place, the most beautiful in the world, no state more glorious. His eyes are mischievous, his lashes are long. I can see what he looked like as a boy. When his adoptive parents brought home his newly adopted sister.

He gives me a ride back to the farm, the streetlights making dizzy shadows and the truck speeding as if we're being chased. It is one a.m. when we hit one of the unexplained cattle breaks in the center of town about twelve blocks from the farm, so we slide out of the truck into the chilly night, into the great What Next? and Clark starts walking me to his home, his hand on the small of my back, our faces stunned by the chill. As we turn the corner to the road leading to the farm, the local bakery is getting its powdered sugar delivered, funneled into the cellar by the barrelful as if it were cement, and we can see nothing but the shadows of the deliverymen in the white, sweet cloud. The street is billowing, and Clark pulls me close and smiles that smile again, and he takes a single lock of my hair between two fingers and runs them all the way to the end, tugging twice, like he's ringing a bell. His ebony eyelashes are trimmed with powder, and before he leans in, he brushes the sugar from my lips so he can taste me.

He tastes just like he did the other night in the cornfield, but with more of a forbidden fruit aftertaste... now that I know he's my cousin's brother.


	3. Chapter 3

**CLARK KENT  
THE DAY OF**

I swung wide the door of my bar, slipped into the darkness, and took my first real deep breath of the day, took in the smell of cigarettes and beer, the spice of a dribbled bourbon, the tang of stale popcorn and old peanuts. There was only one customer in the bar, sitting by herself at the far, far end: an older woman named Sandy who had come in every Thursday with her husband until he died a few months back. Now she came alone every Thursday, never much for conversation, just sitting with a beer and a crossword, preserving a ritual.

My sister was at work behind the bar, her hair pulled back in nerdy-girl flower barrettes, her arms violet as she dipped the beer glasses in and out of hot suds. Chloe is petite and strange-faced, which is not to say unattractive. Her features just take a moment to make sense: the broad jaw; the pinched, pretty nose; the light green globe eyes. If this were a noir movie, a man would tilt back his fedora, whistle at the sight of her, and say, "Now, there's a helluva _broad_!" The face of a '30s screwball-movie queen doesn't always translate in our pixie-princess times, but I know from our years together that men like my sister, a lot, which puts me in that strange brotherly realm of being both proud and wary.

"Do they still make Spam?" she said by way of greeting, not looking up, just knowing it was me, and I felt the relief I usually felt when I saw her: Things might not be great, but things would be okay.

My twin, Chlo. I've said this phrase so many times, it has become a reassuring mantra instead of actual words: Mytwinchlo. We were born in the '80s, back when twins, real or not real, were rare, a bit magical: cousins of the unicorn, siblings of the elves. We even have a dash of not-real -twin-BFF telepathy. Chloe is truly the one person in the entire world I am totally myself with. It should be Lois. But it's not. I can't risk it.

I need to protect her.

From _him.  
_  
I don't feel the need to explain my actions to Chloe. I don't clarify, I don't doubt, I don't worry. I don't tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by far. I tell her as much as I can. We spent months sitting in my loft on the floor back to back, wondering what was going to happen to her after her dad Gabe died, covering each other. It became a lifelong habit. It never mattered to me that she was a girl, strange for a deeply self-conscious kid. What can I say? She was always just cool.

"Spam, that's like processed meat in a can, right? I think they do."

"We should get some," she said. She arched an eyebrow at me. "I'm intrigued."

Without asking, she poured me a draft of Budweiser into a mug of questionable cleanliness. When she caught me staring at the smudged rim, she brought the glass up to her mouth and licked the smudge away, leaving a smear of saliva. She set the mug squarely in front of me. "Better, my prince?"

Chloe firmly believes that I got the best of everything from our parents, that I was the boy they planned on but couldn't conceive, the single child they could afford, and that she sneaked into our family by clamping onto my ankle, an unwanted stranger. She believes that after my parents adopted her she was left to fend for herself throughout childhood, a pitiful creature of random hand-me-downs and forgotten permission slips, tightened budgets and general regret. This vision could be somewhat true; from the moment Lois moved in with us. I can barely stand to admit it.

"Yes, my horrid little servant," I said, and fluttered my hands in royal dispensation.

I huddled over my beer. I needed to sit and drink a beer or three. My nerves were still singing from the morning.

"What's up with you?" she asked. "You look all twitchy." She flicked some suds at me, more water than soap. The air-conditioning kicked on, ruffling the tops of our heads. We spent more time in The Bar than we needed to. It had become the childhood clubhouse we never had. We'd busted open the storage boxes in our mother's attic one one-sided (on Chloe's part) drunken night last year, back when she was alive but right near the end, when we were in need of comfort, and we revisited the toys and games with much oohing and ahhing between sips of canned beer. Christmas in August. After Mom died, Chloe moved into our old house, and we slowly relocated our toys, piecemeal, to The Bar: a Strawberry Shortcake doll, now scentless, pops up on a stool one day (my gift to Chlo). A tiny Hot Wheels El Camino, one wheel missing, appears on a shelf in the corner (Chlo's to me).

We were thinking of introducing a board game night, even though most of our customers were too old to be nostalgic for our Hungry Hungry Hippos, our Game of Life with its tiny plastic cars to be filled with tiny plastic pinhead spouses and tiny plastic pinhead babies. I couldn't remember how you won. (Deep Hasbro thought for the day.)

Chloe refilled my beer, refilled her beer. Her left eyelid drooped slightly. It was exactly noon, 12–00, and I wondered how long she'd been drinking. She's had a bumpy decade. My speculative sister, she of the rocket-science brain and the Wall-of-Weird spirit, dropped out of college and moved to Metropolis in the mid '00s to fulfill her lifelong dream of working in the Bull Pen at the _Daily Planet_. Until she was unceremoniously hoisted out on her $$ by an $$hole CEO two and a half years later. Fired by my former best friend turned frenemy turned worst enemy.

Because she needed to protect me.

Because of _him_.

After her short-lived journalism career ended, along with her short-lived role as a photojournalist's wife, she was one of the original Queen Industries IT phenoms – made crazy money for two years doing personal side jobs for the boss, then took the Oliver Queen champagne bubble bath in 2010 and nearly drowned. Chloe remained unflappable. She was closer to twenty in age, thirty in maturity; she was fine. I didn't even know she'd left Metropolis until she phoned me from Mom's house: _I give up._ I begged her, cajoled her to return, hearing nothing but peeved silence on the other end. After I hung up, I made an anxious pilgrimage to her apartment in the Clock Tower building and saw Jimmy, her beloved ficus tree, yellow-dead on the balcony, and knew she'd never come back.

The Bar seemed to cheer her up. She handled the books, she poured the beers. She stole from the tip jar semi-regularly, but then she did more work than me. We never talked about our old lives. We were Kents, and we were spent, and strangely content about it.

"So, what?" Chloe said, her usual way of beginning a conversation.

"_Eh_."

"Eh, what? Eh, bad? You look bad. And that's saying a lot considering you're the most beautiful creature on this planet."

"Creature. Funny." I shrugged a yes; she scanned my face.

"Lois?" she asked. It was an easy question. I shrugged again – a confirmation this time, a _whatcha gonna do?_ shrug.

Chloe gave me her amused face, both elbows on the bar, hands cradling chin, hunkering down for an incisive dissection of my marriage. Chloe, an expert panel of one. "What about her?"

"Bad day. It's just a bad day."

"Don't let her worry you." Chloe lit a cigarette. She smoked exactly one a day. It started as a way to piss off Lois because she gave up smoking and started chewing Nicorette right before we met. Lois still kept one emergency cigarette in the sun visor of her car. The one she wanted to smoke but wouldn't. So Chloe did. And made sure Lois knew every chance she got. "Women are crazy." Chloe didn't consider herself part of the general category of _women_, a word she used derisively.

I blew Chloe's smoke back to its owner. "It's our anniversary today. Five years."

"Wow." My sister cocked her head back. She'd been maid of honor, all in turquoise, bluish-green like my eyes, exactly the color Lois wanted – "the gorgeous, golden-haired, aquamarine-draped _dame,_" Lois had dubbed her, in a rare moment of amicable civility – but anniversaries weren't something she'd remember. "Jeez. Fµ©k. Dude. That came fast. Well fast after countless years of dancing around each other before Lois finally agreed to be a couple and then made you wait countless years more to keep her maiden name for work reasons." She blew more smoke toward me, a lazy game of cancer catch. "She going to do one of her, uh, what do you call it, not scavenger hunt—"

"Treasure hunt," I said.

My wife loved games, mostly mind games, but also actual games of amusement, and for our anniversary she always set up an elaborate treasure hunt, with each clue leading to the hiding place of the next clue until I reached the end, and my present. It was what her dad always did for her mom on their anniversary until she died, and don't think I don't see the gender roles here, that I don't get the hint. But I did not grow up in Lois's household, I grew up in mine, and the last present I remember my dad giving my mom was an iron, set on the kitchen counter, no wrapping paper.

"Should we make a wager on how pissed she's going to get at you this year?" Chloe asked, smiling over the rim of her beer.

The problem with Lois's treasure hunts: I never figured out the clues. Our first anniversary, back in Metropolis, I went two for seven. That was my best year. The opening parley:

_This place is a bit of a hole in the wall,  
But we had a great kiss there one Tuesday last fall._

Ever been in a spelling bee as a kid? That snowy second after the announcement of the word as you sift your brain to see if you can spell it? It was like that, the blank panic.

"An Irish bar in a not-so-Irish place," Lois nudged.

I bit the side of my lip, started a shrug, scanning our living room as if the answer might appear. She gave me another very long minute.

"We were dancing in the rain," she said in a voice that was pleading on the way to peeved.

I finished the shrug.

_"McGillacuddy's,_ Clark. Remember, when we got lost in the rain in Chinatown trying to find that dim sum place, and it was supposed to be near the statue of Confucius but it turns out there are two statues of Confucius, so we started dancing down the street like _Singin' in the Rain_ and ended up at that random Irish bar all soaking wet, and we slammed a few whiskeys, and you grabbed me and kissed me, and it was—"

"Right! You should have done a clue with Confucius, I would have gotten that."

"The statue wasn't the point. The place was the point. The moment. I just thought it was special." She said these last words in a childish lilt that I once found fetching.

Once.

"It _was_ special." I pulled her to me and kissed her. It started out slow and sweet, until I licked her bottom lip and she bit mine, then I was like a hungry lion devouring a baby gazelle. God I love the way she tastes. If I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life it would be my wife. When I pulled away and let her up for air I really expected to find a mauled carcass. And I would gnaw on her bones until the day I died. "That smooch right there was my special anniversary reenactment. Let's go do it again at McGillacuddy's. I can get you drunk and then we can _do it_ wherever you want, baby."

At McGillacuddy's, the bartender, a big, bearded bear-kid, saw us come in and grinned, poured us both whiskeys, and pushed over the next clue.

_When I'm down and feeling blue  
There's only one place that will do._

That one turned out to be the Alice in Wonderland statue at Centennial Park, which Lois had told me – she'd _told_ me, she _knew _she'd told me _many_ times – lightened her moods as a child. I do not remember any of those conversations. I'm being honest here, I just don't. Which is odd, I have to say. I never forget anything. I have an eidetic memory. Chloe says my mind's like a steel trap. Although I have a dash of ADHD when it comes to Lois; I've always found my wife a bit dazzling, in the purest sense of the word: to lose clear vision, especially from looking at bright light. It was enough to be near her and hear her talk, it didn't always matter what she was saying. It should have, but it didn't.

By the time we got to the end of the day, to exchanging our actual presents – the traditional paper presents for the first year of marriage – Lois was not speaking to me.

"I love you, Lois. You know I love you," I said, tailing her in and out of the family packs of dazed tourists parked in the middle of the sidewalk, oblivious and openmouthed. Lois was slipping through the Centennial Park crowds, maneuvering between laser-eyed joggers and scissor-legged skaters, kneeling parents and toddlers careering like drunks, always just ahead of me, tight-lipped, hurrying nowhere. Me trying to catch up, grab her arm. She stopped finally, gave me a face unmoved as I explained myself, one mental finger tamping down my exasperation: "Lois, I don't get why I need to prove my love to you by remembering the exact same _things_ you do, the exact same _way_ you do. It doesn't mean I don't love our life together. You are my life. I'd die if you left."

A nearby clown blew up a balloon animal, a man bought a rose, a child licked an ice cream cone, and a genuine tradition was born, one I'd never forget: Lois always going overboard, me never, ever worthy of the effort, no matter what I said. It's like she doesn't want to hear the words. It's like she's waiting for something else. Happy anniversary, $$hole.

"I'm guessing –five years – she's going to get _really_ pissed," Chloe continued. "So I hope you got her a really good present."

"On the to-do list."

"What's the, like, symbol, for five years? Paper?"

"Paper is first year," I said. At the end of Year One's unexpectedly wrenching treasure hunt, Lois presented me with a red leather-bound journal, my initials embossed at the bottom, the paper so creamy I expected my fingers to come away moist. "Not that you're the 'Dear Diary' type, but since you keep everything to yourself, I thought it might help. It's for all the stuff you keep inside and are afraid to tell me," she finished softly. In return, I'd presented my wife with a bright red dime-store paper kite, picturing ice cream and chalupas, picnics in the park, monster truck rallies...and dancing in the rain. "It's so I can take you flying," I finished even more softly. It was so uncomfortably silent after the exchange you could hear a pin drop and feel it prick you repeatedly as well. Neither of us liked our presents. I thought Lois was going to strain a muscle with the amount of effort she was putting into forcing a smile while holding her unshed tears at bay. My guilt was choking me so much I could barely breathe.

"Silver?" guessed Chloe. "Bronze? Scrimshaw? Silly String? Rubber? Glue? Teach me Yoda."

"Wood," I said. "No romantic present for wood there is."

At the other end of the bar, Sue neatly folded her newspaper and left it on the bartop with her empty mug and a five-dollar bill. We all exchanged silent smiles as she walked out.

"I got it," Chloe said. "Go home, fµ©k her brains out, then smack her with your penis and scream, "There's some wood for you, biatch!"

We laughed. Then we both flushed pink in our cheeks in the same spot. It was the kind of raunchy, unsisterly joke that Chloe enjoyed tossing at me like a grenade. It was also the reason why, in high school, there were always rumors that we secretly screwed. Twincest. And they didn't even know about our nonsexual peck on the lips when we first met. We were too tight: our inside jokes, our edge-of-the-party whispers. I'm pretty sure I don't need to say this, but you are not Chloe, you might misconstrue, so I will: My sister and I have never screwed or even thought of screwing. We just really like each other.

Chloe was now pantomiming dick-slapping my wife.

No, Lois and Chloe were never going to have that Chlo-Lo connection again. They were each too territorial. Chloe was used to being the alpha girl in my life, Lois was used to being the alpha girl in everyone's life. For two people who lived in the same city – the same city three times: first Smallville, then Metropolis, now Smallville version 2.0 – they barely knew each other. At least not anymore. The 17 years that Chlo-Lo had together B.C. (before Clark) were erased by the 17 years that Clois (Chlo's word, not mine) had together A.D. (after dating). They flitted in and out of my life like well-timed stage actors, one going out the door as the other came in, and on the rare occasions when they both inhabited the same room, they seemed somewhat bemused at the situation.

Before Lois and I got serious, got engaged, got married, I would get glimpses of Chloe's thoughts in a sentence here or there. _It's funny, I can't quite get a bead on her anymore, like who she really is._ And: _You just seem kind of not yourself with her._ And: _There's a difference between loving someone and loving someone enough to let them see the real you._ And finally: _The important thing is she makes you really happy.  
_  
Back when Lois made me really happy.

Lois offered her own notions of Chloe: _She's very … Smallville now, isn't she?_ And: _You just have to be_ _in the right mood for her._ And: _She's a little needy about you, but then I guess she doesn't have anyone else anymore.  
_  
I'd hoped when we all wound up back in Smallville, the two would let it drop – agree to disagree, free to be you and me. Neither did. Chloe was funnier than Lois, though, so it was a mismatched battle. Lois was clever, withering, sarcastic. Lois could get me riled up, could make an excellent, barbed point, but Chloe always made me laugh. It is dangerous to laugh at your wife.

"Chlo, I thought we agreed you'd never mention my genitalia again," I said. "That within the bounds of our sibling relationship, I have no genitalia."

"But _our_ cousin gets to mention it. She's even going to get smacked around by it later. All in the family."

"Chlo!"

The phone rang. Chloe took one more sip of her beer and answered, gave an eyeroll and a smile. "He sure _is _here, one moment, please!" To me, she mouthed: "Charlie."

Charlie Peterson lived across the street from me and Lois. Retired three years. Divorced two years. Moved into our development right after. He'd been a traveling salesman – children's party supplies – and I sensed that after four decades of motel living, he wasn't quite at home being home. He showed up at the bar nearly every day, complaining about his budget until he was offered a first drink on the house. (This was another thing I learned about Charlie from his days in The Bar – that he was a functioning but serious alcoholic.) He had the good grace to accept whatever we were "trying to get rid of," and he meant it: For one full month Charlie drank nothing but dusty Zimas, circa 1992, that we'd discovered in the basement. When a hangover kept Charlie home, he'd find a reason to call: _Your mailbox looks awfully full today, Clark, maybe a package came. _Or_: It's supposed to rain, you might want to close your windows._ The reasons were bogus. Charlie just needed to hear the clink of glasses, the glug of a drink being poured.

I picked up the phone, shaking a tumbler of ice near the receiver so Charlie could imagine his gin.

"Hey, Clark," Charlie's watery voice came over. "Sorry to bother you. I just thought you should know … your door is wide open, and that dog of yours is outside. It isn't supposed to be, right?"

I gave a non-commital grunt.

"I'd go over and check, but I'm a little under the weather," Charlie said heavily.

"Don't worry," I said. "It's time for me to go home anyway."

It was a fifteen-minute drive, straight north along River Road. Driving into our development occasionally makes me shiver, the sheer number of gaping dark houses – homes that have never known inhabitants, or homes that have known owners and seen them ejected, the house standing triumphantly voided, humanless.

When Lois and I moved in, our only neighbors descended on us: one middle-aged single mom of three, bearing a casserole; a young father of triplets with a six-pack of beer (his wife left at home with the triplets); an older Christian couple who lived a few houses down; and of course, Charlie from across the street. We sat out on our back deck and watched the river, and they all talked ruefully about ARMs, and zero percent interest, and zero money down, and then they all remarked how Lois and I were the only ones with river access, the only ones without children.  
"Just the two of you? In this whole big house?" the single mom asked, doling out a scrambled-egg something.

"Just the two of us," I confirmed with a smile, and nodded in appreciation as I took a mouthful of wobbly egg.

"Seems lonely."

On that she was right.

Four months later, the _whole big house_ lady lost her mortgage battle and disappeared in the night with her three kids. Her house has remained empty. The living room window still has a child's picture of a butterfly taped to it, the bright Magic Marker sun-faded to brown. One evening not long ago, I drove past and saw a man, bearded, bedraggled, staring out from behind the picture, floating in the dark like some sad aquarium fish. He saw me see him and flickered back into the depths of the house. The next day I left a brown paper bag full of sandwiches on the front step; it sat in the sun untouched for a week, decaying wetly, until I picked it back up and threw it out.

Quiet. The complex was always disturbingly quiet. As I neared our home, conscious of the noise of the truck engine, I could see the dog was definitely on the steps. Still on the steps, twenty minutes after Charlie's call. This was strange. Lois loved the dog, the dog was neutered, the dog was never let outside, never ever, because the dog, Krypto, was sweet but extremely stupid, and despite the LoJack tracking device pelleted somewhere in his fat furry rolls, Lois knew she'd never see the dog again if he ever got out. The dog would waddle straight into the Kansas River, get dragged into the Missouri River, and then end up flowing into the Mississippi River – deedle-de-dum – and float all the way to the Gulf of Mexico into the maw of a hungry bull shark.

But it turned out the dog wasn't even smart enough to get past the steps. Krypto was perched on the edge of the porch, a pudgy but proud sentinel – Private Tryhard. As I pulled in to the drive, Charlie came out and stood on his own front steps, and I could feel the dog and the old man both watching me as I got out of the truck and walked toward the house, the red peonies along the border looking fat and juicy, asking to be devoured.

I was about to go into blocking position to get the dog when I saw that the front door was open. Charlie had said as much, but seeing it was different. This wasn't taking-out-the-trash-back-in-a-minute open. This was wide-gaping-ominous open.

Charlie hovered across the way, waiting for my response, and like some awful piece of performance art, I felt myself enacting Concerned Husband. I stood on the middle step and frowned, then took the stairs quickly, two at a time, calling out my wife's name.

Silence.

"Lois, you home?"

I ran straight upstairs. No Lois. The ironing board was set up, the iron still on, a skirt waiting to be pressed.

"Lois!"

As I ran back downstairs, I could see Charlie still framed in the open doorway, hands on hips, watching. I swerved into the living room, and pulled up short. The carpet glinted with shards of glass, the coffee table shattered. End tables were on their sides, books slid across the floor like a card trick. Even the heavy antique ottoman was belly-up, its four tiny feet in the air like something dead. In the middle of the mess was a pair of good sharp scissors.

Oh god. No. They _know_.

They figured it out. Because of _him_.

"Lois!"

I began running as fast as I could, in front of Charlie, bellowing her name. Through the kitchen, where a kettle was burning, down to the basement, where the guest room stood empty, and then out the back door. I pounded across our yard onto the slender boat deck leading out over the river. I peeked over the side to see if she was in our rowboat, where I had found her one day, tethered to the dock, rocking in the water, her face to the sun, eyes closed, and as I'd peered down into the dazzling reflections of the river, at her beautiful, still face, she'd suddenly opened her hazel eyes and said nothing to me, and I'd said nothing back and gone into the house alone.

"Lois!"

I closed my eyes and listened. For _that_ sound.

She wasn't on the water, she wasn't in the house. She wasn't in a ten mile radius. Lois was not there.

Lois was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**LOIS LANE  
SEPTEMBER 29, 2005**

**– DIARY ENTRY –  
**

Well, well, well. Guess who's back Mrs. Kreitzman? Clark Kent, cornfield Commando, Smallville party boy, sugar-cloud kisser, disappearing act. Four months, one week, couple of days, no word, and then he resurfaces, like it was all part of the plan. After his and Chloe's high school graduation, he just vanished into the ether and left the rest of his family to fend for themselves while half the town was destroyed. Turns out, he was up north training with his birth father, for what I don't know and with whom, I didn't even think he knew. And he left my cousin Chloe up in the Yukon in a hospital because she got sick after she traveled to find him and tell him about what happened to the farm, to their home, and to their parents. She couldn't call him because his cell was out of juice. (He said.)

He left _me _to help _his_ parents. Alone. Of course I _was _angry. I had _been _angry. But now I'm not. Let me set the scene Mrs. Kreitzman, because it deserves setting for posterity. (She said.) Today. Gusty September winds. I'm walking along Main Street, making a lunchtime contemplation of the sidewalk bodega bins – endless plastic containers of cantaloupe and honeydew and melon perched on ice like the day's catch – and I could feel a guy barnacling himself to my side as I sailed along, and I corner-eyed the intruder and realized who it was. It was him. The boy in "I met a boy!"

_Pop Quiz Hot Shot: the boy who prevented that psycho biatch plastic surgeon from rearranging your face, the boy who rescued you from that 'roid rage jock drowning you in that sewage drain, the boy who took you as his date to his senior prom and pinned that corsage awfully close to your boob, that boy has literally popped up outta nowhere (how does he do that?), superglued himself to your hip, flashed you his megawatt smile and batted his aquamarine eyes. What do you do? What do you do?_

I didn't break my stride, just turned to him and said:

a) "Do I know you?" (manipulative, challenging)  
b) "Oh, wow, I'm so happy to see you!" (eager, doormatlike)  
c) "Go fµ©k yourself." (aggressive, bitter)  
d) "Well, you certainly take your time about it, don't you, Smallville?" (light, playful, laid-back)

Answer: D

~~..~~

And now we're together. Together, together. It was that easy.

It's interesting, the timing. Favorable, if you will. (And I will.) Just last night was my parents' book party. _Loquacious Lois and the Big Day_. Yup, Sam and Ella's ghost couldn't resist. My dad (and mom's memory) have given their daughter's namesake what they, or at least the General, can't imagine his daughter ever having: a husband! Yes, for book twenty, _Loquacious Lois_ is getting married! Wheeeeeee. No one cares. No one wanted Loquacious Lois to grow up, least of all me. Leave her in knee socks and hair ribbons and let _me_ grow up, unencumbered by my literary alter ego, my paperbound better half, the me I was supposed to be.

But _Lois_ is the Lane bread and butter, and she's served us well, so I suppose I can't begrudge her a perfect match. She's marrying good old _Capable Clark_, of course, the illegal alien. He'll finally have his green card and be _capable_ of staying in the good old U.S. of A instead of being deported back to that other worldly locale he was born in: Canada. _Capable Clark and Loquacious Lois._ And no Mrs. Kreitzman, it's not a coincidence. They'll be just like my parents: sappy-happy. Lois and Clark. Clark and Lois. Clois. Ella and Sam. Sam and Ella. Samanella. _Salmonella?_

Still, it was unsettling, the incredibly small order the publisher put in. A new _Loquacious Lois _used to get a first print of a hundred thousand copies back in the '80s and '90s. Now ten thousand. The book-launch party was, accordingly, unfabulous. Off-tone. How do you throw a party for a fictional character who started life as a precocious moppet of six and is now a twenty-five-year-old bride-to-be who still speaks like a child? _("Sheesh," thought Lois, "my dear fiancé sure is a grouch-monster when he doesn't get his way …"_ That is an actual quote. The whole book made me want to punch _Lois_ right in her stupid, spotless, brand-spanking-new vagina.) The book is a nostalgia item, intended to be purchased by women who grew up with _Loquacious Lois,_ but I'm not sure who will actually want to read it. I read it, of course. I gave the book my blessing – multiple times. The General feared that I might take _Lois's _marriage as some jab at my perpetually single state. ("I, for one, don't think women should marry before thirty-five," said my dad, who married my mom at twenty-three.)

My parents worried that I'd take _Lois_ too personally – the General always tells me not to read too much into her. And yet I can't fail to notice that whenever I screw something up, Lois does it right: When I finally quit violin at age twelve, _Lois _was revealed as a prodigy in the next book. _("Sheesh, violin can be hard work, but hard work is the only way to get better!")_ When I blew off the junior tennis championship at age sixteen to do a beach weekend with friends, _Lois _recommitted to the game. _("Sheesh, I know it's fun to spend time with friends, but I'd be letting myself and everyone else down if I didn't show up for the tournament.")_ This used to drive me mad, but after I went off to Met U (and _Lois_ correctly chose my parents' alma mater), I decided it was all too ridiculous to think about. That my parents, Salmonella - a four star Army General who raised me and my sister alone since I was six when my _child psychologist_ mother died and was still writing books with my shrink mother's name attached as if she had some input into the books or the real life child - chose this particular public form of passive-aggressiveness toward _their child_ was not just fµ©ked up but also stupid and weirder than this town and kind of hilarious. I mean come on, the General named the little orphan Canadian kid who would grow up to be my star-crossed love interest after my cousin's adopted brother she kept gushing about to him on the phone whenever they would talk. You would think Chlo's brother had the ability to move mountains it seemed. So be it. _Capable Clark. Fµ©ked up_.

The book party was as schizophrenic as the book – at the Ace of Clubs, right in downtown Metropolis, one of those trendy industrial clubs adorned with art deco mirrors that shake to the pumped up karaoke beats on Friday nights that are supposed to make you feel like a Bright Young Thing. Gin martinis wobbling on trays lofted by waiters with rictus smiles. Greedy journalists with knowing smirks and hollow legs, getting the free buzz before they go somewhere better.

The General circulates the room with a photo-button of him and my mom pinned to his military uniform jacket lapel – their love story is always part of the _Loquacious Lois_ story: husband and wife in mutual creative labor for nearly two decades and almost fifteen years after the latter was laid to rest. Soul mates. The General really calls them that, which makes sense, because I guess they are. I can vouch for it, having studied them for many years, little lonely only child Army Brat being dragged from military base to military base while my sister Lucy skied the Alps in a Swiss boarding school. My parents had no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they rode through life like conjoined jellyfish – expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other's spaces liquidly – until they were parted by death. Making it look easy, the soul-mate thing. People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.

Naturally, I have to sit on some velvety banquette in the corner of the room, out of the noise, so I can give a few interviews to a sad handful of kid interns who've gotten stuck with the "grab a quote" assignment from their editors.

_Pop Quiz Hot Shot: How does it feel to see Lois finally married to Clark? Because you're not married, right? How does it feel? How does it feel?_

Question asked by:

a) a sheepish, bug-eyed kid balancing a notebook on top of his messenger bag  
b) an overdressed, sleek-haired young thing with fµ©k-me stilettos  
c) an eager, tattooed rockabilly girl who seemed way more interested in _Lois _than one would guess a tattooed rockabilly girl would be  
d) all of the above

_Answer: D  
_  
Me: _"Oh, I'm thrilled for Lois and Clark, I wish them the best. Ha, ha."_

My answers to all the other questions, in no particular order:

_"Some parts of Lois are inspired by me, and some are just fiction."_

"I'm happily single right now, no Capable Clark in my life!"

"No, I don't think Lois oversimplifies the male-female dynamic."

"No, I wouldn't say Lois is dated; I think the series is a classic."

"Yes, I am single. No Capable Clark in my life right now."

"Why is Lois loquacious and Clark's just capable? Well, don't you know a lot of powerful, fabulous women who settle for regular guys, Average Joes and Capable Clarks? No, just kidding, don't write that."

"Yes, I am single."

"Yes, my parents are definitely soul mates."

"Yes, I would like that for myself one day."

"Yep, single, motherfµ©ker. I have no idea where the fµ©k Capable Clark is."

Same questions over and over, and me trying to pretend they're thought-provoking. And them trying to pretend they're thought-provoking. Thank God for the open bar. And a blind eye turned on underage drinking.

Then no one else wants to talk to me – that fast – and the PR girl pretends it's a good thing: _Now you can get back to your party! _I wriggle back into the (small) crowd, where the General is in full hosting mode, his face flushed – Sam with his toothy prehistoric-monster-fish smile and chickeny, cheerful head bob – wearing a photo button of him and Ella, their hands intertwined, making each other laugh, enjoying each other, thrilled with each other – and I think, _I am so fµ©king lonely._

I go home and cry for a while. I am almost twenty. That's not old, especially not in Metropolis, but fact is, it's been _years_ since I even really liked someone. So how likely is it I'll meet someone I love, much less someone I love enough to marry? I'm tired of not knowing who I'll be with, or if I'll be with anyone.

I have a few older friends who are married – not a few who are happily married, but a few married friends. The few happy ones are like my father: They're baffled by my singleness. A smart, pretty, nice girl like me, a girl with so many _interests_ and _enthusiasms_, a cool coffee barista job, a loving family. And let's say it: money. They knit their eyebrows and pretend to think of men they can set me up with, but we all know there's no one left, no one _good_ left, and I know that they secretly think there's something wrong with me, something hidden away that makes me unsatisfiable, unsatisfying.

The ones who are not soul-mated – the ones who have _settled_ already in their young lives– are even more dismissive of my singleness: It's not that hard to find someone to marry, they say. No relationship is perfect, they say – they, who make do with dutiful sex and gassy bedtime rituals, who settle for TV as conversation, who believe that husbandly capitulation – yes, honey, okay, honey – is the same as concord. _He's doing what you tell him to do because he doesn't care enough to argue,_ I think. _Your petty demands simply make him feel superior, or resentful, and someday he will fµ©k his pretty, young coworker who asks nothing of him, and you will actually be shocked. _Give me a man with a little fight in him, who bickers and banters and snarks snappy patter, a man who calls me on my b_µ_llshi+. (But who also kind of likes my b_µ_llshi+.) And yet: Don't land me in one of those relationships where we're always pecking at each other, disguising insults as jokes, rolling our eyes and "playfully" scrapping in front of our friends, hoping to lure them to our side of an argument they could not care less about. Those awful _if only_ relationships: _This marriage would be great if only _… and you sense the _if only_ list is a lot longer than either of them realizes.

So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn't make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a six pack and burn myself a frozen microwave dinner (who does that?) and tell myself, _This is perfect_, as if I'm the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart – perfect-on-paper men who make me feel like I'm in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He _gets _me. She _gets_ me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase?

So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-paper man – the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands that you've made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational phlegm he will wipe away later. You spend another hour trying to find each other, to recognize each other, and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, _That was fine._ And your life is a long line of fine.

And then you run into Clark Kent on Main Street as you're buying diced cantaloupe, and pow, you are known, you are recognized, the both of you. You both find the exact same things worth remembering. _(Just one olive, though)._ You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see _reading the Daily Planet in bed and doing the crossword in erasable ink _and _waffles on an Easy Like Sunday Morning_ and _laughing at nothing_ _while you bathe Shelby_ and _his mouth on yours sucking your tongue and biting your bottom lip moments after you met in a cornfield_. And it's so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: _Oh, here is the rest of my life. It's finally arrived.  
_


	5. Chapter 5

**CLARK KENT  
THE DAY OF**

I can't believe I have to call them to help me find her.

I waited for the police first in the kitchen, but the pungent, choking smell of the burnt teakettle was curling up in the back of my throat, underscoring my need to retch, so I drifted out on the front porch, sat on the top stair, and willed myself to be calm and refrain from setting things on fire. I kept trying Lois's cell, and it kept going to voice mail, that quick-clip cadence swearing she'd phone right back. Lois always phoned right back. It had been three hours, and I'd left five messages, and Lois had not phoned back.

I didn't expect her to. I'd tell the police: Lois would never have left the house with the teakettle on. Or the door open. Or anything waiting to be ironed. The woman got sh!+ done, and she was not one to abandon a project (say, her fixer-upper husband, for instance), even if she decided she didn't like it as much as she used to, if at all anymore. She'd made a grim figure on the beach during our two-week honeymoon, battling her way through a million mystical pages of _The Lord of the Rings_, casting pissy glances at me as I devoured Stephen King thriller after thriller. Since our move back to Smallville, the loss of her job, her life had revolved (devolved?) around the completion of endless tiny, inconsequential projects. The dress would have been ironed.

And there was the living room, _signs pointing to a struggle._ I already knew Lois wasn't phoning back. I wanted the next part to start.

_The part where I break every bone in the body of the person responsible with my bare hands.  
_  
It was the best time of day, the July sky cloudless, the slowly setting sun a spotlight on the east, turning everything golden and lush, a Flemish painting. The police rolled up. It felt casual, me sitting on the steps, an evening bird singing in the tree, these two cops getting out of their car at a leisurely pace, as if they were dropping by a neighborhood picnic. Kid cops, mid-twenties, confident and uninspired, accustomed to soothing worried parents of curfew-busting teens. A Hispanic girl, her hair in a long dark braid, and a black guy with a marine's stance. Smallville had become a bit (a very tiny bit) less Caucasian while I was away, but it was still so severely segregated that the only people of color I saw in my daily routine tended to be occupational roamers: delivery men, medics, postal workers. Cops. ("This place is so white, it's disturbing," said Lois, who, back in the melting pot of Metropolis, counted a single African-American among her friends. Acquaintances really. Victor was my friend, not Lois's. I accused her of craving ethnic window dressing, minorities as backdrops. It did not go well.)

"Mr. Kent? I'm Officer Caban," said the woman, "and this is Officer Boskett. We understand you're concerned about your wife?"

Boskett looked down the road, sucking on a piece of candy. I could see his eyes follow a darting bird out over the river. Then he snapped his gaze back toward me, his curled lips telling me he saw what everyone else did. I have a face you want to punch: I'm a working-class farmboy trapped in the body of a total trust-fund Scoobydouche, as Lois would say. I smile a lot to make up for my face, but this only sometimes works. I even wore glasses for a bit, fake spectacles with clear lenses that I thought would lend me an affable, unthreatening vibe, a nice mild-mannered disguise. "You do realize that makes you even more of a dick?" Chloe reasoned. I threw them out two years ago and smiled harder.

I didn't need them anymore because _he _hadn't been seen in or outside of Metropolis since before I moved back to Smallville.

I waved in the cops: "Come inside the house and see."

The two climbed the steps, accompanied by the squeaking and shuffling noises of their belts and guns. I stood in the entry to the living room and pointed at the destruction.

"Oh," said Officer Boskett, and gave a brisk crack of his knuckles. He suddenly looked less bored.

~~..~~

Boskett and Caban leaned forward in their seats at the dining room table as they asked me all the initial questions: who, where, how long. Their ears were literally pricked. A call had been made out of my hearing, and Boskett informed me that detectives were being dispatched. I had the grave pride of being taken seriously.

Boskett was asking me for the second time if I'd seen any strangers in the neighborhood lately, was reminding me for the third time about Smallville's roving bands of homeless men since the down turn of the economy, when the phone rang. I launched myself across the room and grabbed it.

A surly woman's voice: "Mr. Kent, this is Old Orchard Assisted Living." It was where Chloe and I boarded our altered-mental-status-post-cardiac-arrest-riddled father.

"I can't talk right now, I'll call you back," I snapped, and hung up. I disliked the women who staffed Old Orchard: unsmiling, uncomforting. Underpaid, gruelingly underpaid, which was probably why they never smiled or comforted. I knew my anger toward them was misdirected – it absolutely infuriated me that my father lingered on while my mom was in the ground.

It was Chloe's turn to send the check. I was pretty sure it was Chloe's turn for July. And I'm sure she was positive it was mine. We'd done this before. Chloe said we must be mutually subliminally forgetting to mail those checks, that what we really wanted to forget was our dad.

I was telling Boskett about the strange man I'd seen in our neighbor's vacated house when the doorbell rang. The doorbell rang. It sounded so normal, like I was expecting a pizza.

The two detectives entered with end-of-shift weariness. The man was rangy and thin, with a face that tapered severely into a dribble of a chin below a broad mustache. The woman had gotten surprisingly unattractive in the past few years – brazenly, beyond the scope of everyday unattractive: tiny round eyes set tight as buttons, a long twist of a nose, skin spackled with tiny freckles, long lank hair the color of dried corn. In actuality, she was probably perfectly attractive. But she was no Lois.

Nancy spoke first, the first time I had spoken to her since I was a teenager, an echo of Officer Caban. "Mr. Kent? Detective Nancy Adams. This is my partner, Detective Ethan Miller. We understand there are some concerns about your wife."

_ Sheriff Nancy Adams and Sheriff Ethan Miller were detectives now? My dad would roll over in his grave if he were finally dead._

My stomach growled loud enough for us all to hear it, but we pretended we didn't.

"We take a look around, sir?" Ethan said. He had fleshy bags under his eyes and scraggly untrimmed whiskers in his mustache. His shirt wasn't wrinkled, but he wore it like it was; he looked like he should stink of stale cigarettes and bitter coffee, even though he didn't. He smelled like Dial soap.

I led them a few short steps to the living room, pointed once again at the wreckage, where the two younger cops were kneeling carefully, as if waiting to be discovered doing something useful. Nancy steered me toward a chair in the dining room, away from but in view of the _signs of struggle._

Nancy walked me through the same basics I'd told Caban and Boskett, her attentive sparrow eyes on me. Ethan squatted down on a knee, assessing the living room.

"Have you phoned friends or family, people your wife might be with?" Nancy asked.

"I … No. Not yet. I guess I was waiting for you all."

"Ah." She smiled. "I forgot: baby of the family."

"What?"

"You're the baby. Lois and Chloe are both older than you."

I sensed some internal judgment being made. "Why?" Lois's favorite vase was lying on the floor, intact, bumped up against the wall. It was a wedding present, a Japanese masterwork that Lois put away each week when our housecleaner came because she was sure it would get smashed.

"Just a guess of mine, why you'd wait for us: You're used to someone else always taking the lead," Nancy said. "That's what my little brother is like. It's a birth-order thing." She scribbled something on a notepad.

"Okay." I gave an angry shrug. "Do you need my zodiac sign too, or can we get started?"

"Easy Mr. Kent. Always a hothead. Just like your father." Nancy smiled at me kindly, waiting.

"I waited to do something because, I mean, she's obviously not with a friend," I said, pointing at the disarray in the living room.

"You've lived here, what, Mr. Kent, two years?" she asked.

"Two years September."

"Moved back from the big apricot into the back of beyond?"

"Metropolis. And I've lived here half of my life Nancy."

"Easy Mr. Kent. I don't want to have to tell you again. And it's Detective Adams now."

She pointed upstairs, asking permission without asking, and I nodded and followed her, Ethan following me.

"I was a reporter there," I blurted out before I could stop myself. Even now, two years back here, and I couldn't bear for someone to think this was my only life.

Nancy: "Sounds impressive."

Ethan: "Of what?"

I timed my answer to my stair climbing: I wrote for the _Daily Planet, _Lois was my partner (step), I wrote about corrupt politicians and truth (step) and city crime and justice (step). At the top of the stairs, I turned to see Ethan looking back at the living room. He snapped to.

"And vigilantes and the American way" he called up as he began climbing. "Did you forget that one?"

Don't bring _him_ into this.

"Crime _fighters_," I said. We reached the top of the stairs, Nancy waiting for us. "Current events, but, uh, you know, nothing hifalutin." I winced: _hifalutin_? How patronizing. You two country bumpkins probably need me to translate my English, Comma, Educated Metropolitan into English, Comma, Midwest Folksy. _Me do sum scribbling of stuffs I get in my noggin after watchin' them good 'ole boys never meaning no harm been in trouble with the law since the day they was born!_

"She loves heroes," Ethan said, gesturing toward Nancy. Nancy nodded: _I do._

"Now I own The Bar, downtown," I added. I taught a class at Central Kansas too, but to add that suddenly felt too needy. I wasn't on a date.

Nancy was peering into the bathroom, halting me and Ethan in the hallway. "The Bar?" she said. "I know the place. Been meaning to drop by. Love the name. Very meta."

_Meta? Seriously. Who are you and what have you done with Sheriff Adams?  
_  
"Sounds like a smart move," Ethan said. Nancy made for the bedroom, and we followed. "A life surrounded by beer ain't too bad."

_Thank god Ethan. You haven't been replaced by a pod person.  
_  
"Sometimes the answer _is_ at the bottom of a bottle," I said, then winced again at the inappropriateness.

We entered the bedroom.

Ethan laughed. "Don't I know that feeling."

"See how the iron is still on?" I began.

Nancy nodded, opened the door of our roomy closet, and walked inside, flipping on the light, fluttering her latexed hands over shirts and dresses as she moved toward the back. She made a sudden noise, bent down, turned around – holding a perfectly square box covered in elaborate silver wrapping.

My stomach seized.

"Someone's birthday?" she asked.

"It's our anniversary."

Nancy and Ethan both twitched like spiders and pretended they didn't.

~~..~~

By the time we returned to the living room, the kid officers were gone. Ethan got down on his knees, eyeing the overturned ottoman.

"Uh, I'm a little freaked out, obviously," I started.

_More than you realize or I can tell you._

"I don't blame you at all, Clark," Ethan said earnestly. He had pale blue eyes that jittered in place, an unnerving tic.

"Can we do something? To find my wife. I mean, because she's clearly not here."

Nancy pointed at the wedding portrait on the wall: me in my tux, a block of teeth frozen on my face, my arms curved formally around Lois's waist; Lois, her mocha colored hair tightly coiled and sprayed, her veil blowing in the Crater Lake breeze, her eyes open too wide because she always blinked at the last minute and she was trying so hard not to blink. The day after Independence Day, the sulfur from the fireworks mingling with the still lake water – summer.

Crater Lake had been good to us. I remember discovering several months into our relationship that Lois, my girlfriend, was also quite wealthy and infamous, a treasured child of creative-genius parents. An icon of sorts, thanks to a namesake book series that I thought I could remember as a kid. _Loquacious Lois. _Lois explained this to me in calm, measured tones, as if I were a patient waking from a coma. As if she'd had to do it too many times before and it had gone badly – the admission of pop culture celebrity greeted with too much enthusiasm, the disclosure of a secret identity that she herself didn't create.

Lois told me who and what she was, and subsequently who and what I was, then we went out to the Lanes' renovated cabin purchased on Crater Lake as a summer home outside of Metropolis, went sailing together, and I thought: _I am a boy from Smallville, flying across the lake with people who've seen much more than I have. If I began seeing things now, living big, I could still not catch up with them. _It didn't make me feel jealous. It made me feel content. I never aspired to wealth or fame. I was not raised by big-dreamer parents who pictured their child as a future president like the Luthors. I was raised by pragmatic parents who pictured their child as a future farmer of some sort, making a living off the land of some sort. To me, it was heady enough to be in the Lanes' proximity, to skim across the lake and return to a plushly restored home and there to prepare and eat meals of organic, healthful foods whose names I didn't know how to pronounce. Like hot wings. And nachos. It didn't take me long to realize that the only thing bubbly Lois and Sam liked came in a six pack.

So we married on the lakeside beach, _Loquacious Lois and Capable Clark,_ on a deep blue summer day, ate and drank under a white tent that billowed like a sail, and a few hours in, I sneaked Lois off into the dark, toward the still crystal water, because I was feeling so unreal, I believed I had become merely a shimmer. The chilly mist on my skin pulled me back, Lois pulled me back, toward the golden glow of the tent, where the Gods were feasting, everything ambrosia. Our whole courtship was just like that.

Nancy leaned in to examine Lois. "Your wife was always very pretty."

"She is, she's beautiful, she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." I said, and felt my stomach lilt.

"What anniversary today?" she asked.

"Five."

"After all those years before the five?"

I was jittering from one foot to another, wanting to do something. I didn't want them to discuss how lovely my wife was, I wanted them to go out and search for my fµ©king wife. I didn't say this out loud, though; I often don't say things out loud, even when I should. I contain and I compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you'd never guess from looking at me.

"Five, big one. Let me guess, reservations at the Ace of Clubs in Metropolis?" Ethan asked. He said it was the only upscale restaurant around.

"Of course, Ace of Clubs."

It was my fifth lie to the police. I was just starting.


	6. Chapter 6

**LOIS LANE  
DECEMBER 10, 2010**

**-DIARY ENTRY-**

I am fat and happy with one true notoriously B.I.G love (R.I.P Big Poppa)! Husky with Romeo + Juliette, DiCaprio + Danes soul mate ardor! Beached whale morbidly obese with SeaWorld Shamu hopeless devotion! An ecstatic, busy bumblebee of pre-marital enthusiasm. I positively hum around him, fussing and fixing. I have become a freaky strange thing, like a Wall of Weird weirdo (miss you Chlo). You're never gonna believe it Mrs. Kreitzman. I have become a _fiancée._ I find myself steering the ship of conversations – bulkily, unnaturally – just so I can say his name aloud. I have become a fiancée, I have become a half of a couple bore, I have been asked to forfeit my Independent Young Feminist card. And I don't give a rat's a$$ or a flying fµ©k or a flying rat or an a$$ fµ©k. Oooh a$$ fµ©k. Put that on the to-do list. I go grocery shopping for him, I try to trim his hair but the scissors are always rusty and break. Put buy new scissors on the to-do list. I've gotten so retro, at one point I will probably use the word _pocketbook,_ shuffling out the door in my swingy tweed coat, my lips painted red, on the way to the _beauty parlor._ Nothing bothers me. Well, except for _that._

There is always _that._

We'll get to _that._

_All in good time my dear husband-to-be._

But for now Mrs. Kreitzman, everything seems like it will turn out fine, every bother, maybe even _that,_ transformed into an amusing story to be told over dinner. _So remember the time you told me you wanted to share your life with me but forgot to share with me… that…hahahaha! Ah, we'll have such fun with…that.  
_  
Oh Mr. Kent, you're lucky I love you more than air and can't breathe without you.

Clark is like a good stiff drink: He gives everything the correct perspective. Not a different perspective, the correct perspective. With Clark, I realize it actually, truly doesn't matter if the electricity bill is a few days late, if my latest quiz turns out a little lame. (My most recent, I'm not joking: "What kind of tree would you be?" Me, I'm a cherry tree! Wild cherries. This means nothing!) It doesn't matter if the new _Loquacious Lois_ book has been well and duly scorched, the reviews vicious, the sales a stunning plummet after a limp start. It doesn't matter what color I paint our room, or how late traffic makes me, or whether our recycling really, truly does get recycled. (Just level with me, Metropolis, does it?) It doesn't matter, because I have found my match. It's Clark, laid-back and calm, smart and fun and uncomplicated.

_Uncomplicated._

_Who are you kidding Lane?_ Kent? Kent-Lane? We'll figure it out.

Maybe not uncomplicated. Untortured, happy. Nice. Big hands. Huge feet.

Awesome penis.

~~..~~

All the stuff I don't like about myself has been pushed to the back of my brain. Maybe that is what I like best about him, the way he makes me. Not makes me feel, just makes _me._ I am fun. I am playful. I am game. I feel naturally happy and entirely satisfied. I am a fiancée! It's freakishly weird to say those words. (Seriously, about the recycling, Metropolis – come on, just a wink.)

We do silly things. Like last weekend we drove to Kansas City, Missouri because it's next to Kansas City, Kansas.

_I wanted to show him in the Show Me state that it's possible for one thing to have two distinct identities._

Also, because we had never had sex outside of Kansas.

Let me set the scene, because it deserves setting for posterity. We cross the state line – _Welcome to Missouri!_ the sign says, and also: _Show Me. _Home of the _aquamarine _gemstone.

Missouri, a state of many rich _identities._

_Show me Clark. _

Look _aquamarine _eyes into hazel and _show me._

_Tell me.  
_  
I point Clark down the first dirt road I see, and we rumble five minutes until we hit cornstalks on all sides. We have a thing for cornstalks. We don't speak. I look at him with sleep-eyed lidded sweetness. He groans against his will, pushes his seat back, his hands gripping my slender hips tight as he impatiently pulls up my skirt. He moves his hands downwards, between my glistening legs, ready to rip my panties in two with a flick of his wrist, only to find soft, smooth, bare skin. I am not wearing panties, I can see his mouth turn down and his face go slack, the drugged, determined look he gets when he's turned on. The sight of my naked pµ$$y makes him grunt like a crazy caveman. I can feel how rock hard he is underneath my moist heat, his wetness beneath dampening the same jeans as my wetness above.

My fingers reach down and unzip and unleash him. He loosens up the top few of my shirt buttons and pops the bottom few clear off. He moans my name as my heavy breasts strain against the silky material of my bra. I scream out as he grabs one full breast in his full hand, before arching his neck to take it into his mouth with a heavy groan and begins to suck hard the full hard nipple through the silky fabric. He threads his long thick fingers through my wild tresses and pulls my hair and head back, arching my back, taking my other breast in his mouth, groaning like a man possessed as he sucks them both hungrily. The silk clings to my hardened nipples as he caresses my tits, bruising them with his savage sucks.  
He picks me up by the waist, his long fingers digging into my sides as he spins me around so I can climb atop him, my back to him, facing the windshield. He groans as I take his bulging, swollen cock out and stroke him steadily along his pre-cum moistened shaft. I scream as he impales me against the steering wheel, plunging and thrusting deep inside me, the sticky sweet feel of my juices encasing him, bathing him, soaking him, drenching him, soft and wet and moist, pushing harder inside of me, growling out loud when his huge hard cock plunges deeper inside my tight, wet hole. He licks and sucks my neck as he fondles my tits, as we move together thrusting against each other, the horn emitting tiny bleats that mimic my squeaks and squeals, my hand making a smearing noise as I press it against the windshield.

He takes both my hands in one of his and pushes them above my head, around his neck and pins them to the seat behind us, my hardened nipples at attention saluting his other full hand. I shake uncontrollably at the force of his thrusts, plunging deeper and harder inside me, assaulting me without hesitation or mercy, pumping inside me faster and harder until I cry out his name in convulsions. At the sound of his name on my lips and the feel of my juices flooding and pooling around his hard cock, I feel his body tense and shake and writhe in orgasm underneath me while inside me, filling me with his hot sperm, spilling out of my naked pµ$$y as he overflows my tight wet hole with his hot explosion. He rides out his come, grunting and growling with every thrust, until I feel his cock empty completely inside me. He buries his face in the nape of my neck, exhaling long drawn out groans, licking and sucking the soft skin of my neck, with my arms still pinned behind his.

He's mumbling incoherently, in a foreign tongue I've never heard. His words start to mix with English. I manage to make out the word soul mate as he's tracing a diamond-shaped pattern repeatedly over my stomach. I melt into his arms and wait for him to come back to me from wherever he's lost at the moment.

The Kansas City cornstalks are obscured in hot fog from our view inside the Motor City pick-up. I got rammed in a Ram. Classic. Clark and I can come anywhere; neither of us gets stage fright, it's something we're both rather proud of. We drive right back home as soon as we catch our breath and our heartbeats return to normal. I eat beef jerky and ride with bare feet on the dashboard as he cracks jokes about me jerking off his beef while he sucks on my tiny red-lacquered toes.

~~..~~

We love our new apartment. Our first apartment together. The apartment that _Loquacious Lois and Capable Clark _started their life together in. A downtown apartment with the big wide-screen view of Metropolis. It's extravagantly furnished for two reporters' salaries, it makes me feel guilty, but it's perfect. I battle the spoiled-rich-girl vibe where I can. Lots of DIY. We painted the walls ourselves over two weekends: velvety sky blue and fire engine red and golden sun yellow. None of the colors turned out like Clark thought they would, but he pretends to like the primary-colored combo them anyway. We fill _our home_ with knickknacks from flea markets; we buy records for Clark's vintage record player that belonged to his grandpa. Last night we sat on the old Persian rug, drinking wine and listening to the vinyl scratches as the sky went dark and Metropolis switched on, and Clark said, "This is how I always pictured it. This is exactly how I pictured it."

On weekends, we talk to each other under four layers of bedding, our faces warm under a flannel comforter. Even the floorboards are cheerful: There are two old creaky slats that call out to us as we walk in the door. I love it, I love that it is ours, that we have a great story behind the ancient floor lamp, or the misshapen clay mug that sits near our coffeepot, never holding anything but a single paper clip. I spend my days thinking of sweet things to do for him – go buy a peppermint soap that will sit in his palm like a warm stone, or maybe a slim slice of halibut that I could cook and serve to him drizzled in hot fudge, an ode to a long forgotten Valentine's Day memory. I know, I am ridiculous. I love it, though – I never knew I was capable of being ridiculous over a man. It's a relief. I even swoon over his socks, which he manages to shed in adorably tangled poses, as if Shelby carried them in from another room.

We'll end our day at the Fulton Street fish market, where we'll buy a pair of beautiful lobsters, and I will hold the container in my lap as Clark jitters nervously in the truck beside me. We'll rush home, and I will drop them in a new pot on our old stove with all the finesse of a girl who has lived many summers at the lake while Clark giggles and pretends to hide in fear outside the kitchen door.

I had suggested we get burgers. Clark wanted us to go out – five star, fancy – somewhere with a clockwork of courses and name-dropping waiters, kind of like the place we never made it to last night as the sky rained white rose petals as he got down on one knee. So the lobsters are a perfect in-between, the lobsters are what everyone tells us (and tells us and tells us) that marriage will be about: compromise!

We'll eat lobster with butter and have sex on the floor while Tawny Kitaen does splits and rolls around between David Coverdale's jaguars. We'll get slowly lazy-drunk on good Scotch, Clark's favorite, which is why always sips so slow he sobers up before he ever gets tipsy.

Then maybe we'll have sex again. And a late-night burger. And more Scotch. Voilà: happiest couple on the block! And they say marriage is such hard work.


	7. Chapter 7

**CLARK KENT  
THE NIGHT OF**

Nancy and Ethan moved our interview to the police station, which looks like a small town failing community federal credit union. Because it is. Or was. They left me alone in a little room for forty-two minutes and seventeen seconds, me willing myself not to move. To pretend to be calm is to be calm, in a way. I slouched over the table, put my chin on my arm, closed my eyes. Waited.

_Listened.  
_  
"Do you want to call Lois's parents?" Nancy had asked.

"It's just her dad. Lo lost her mom when she was six. I don't want to panic the General," I said. "If we don't hear from her in an hour, I'll call."

We'd done three rounds of that conversation.

Finally, the sheriffs, excuse me, the detectives came in and sat at the table across from me. I fought the urge to laugh at how much it felt like a TV crime drama. This was the same room I'd seen channel surfing through late-night cable for the past ten years, and the two cops – weary, intense – acted like the stars. Totally fake. Like the Hall of Presidents. Or Space Mountain. Epcot Police Station. Nancy was even holding a paper coffee cup and a manila folder that looked like a prop. Cop prop. I felt giddy, felt for a moment we were all pretend people: _Let's play the Missing Wife game!_

"You okay there, Clark?" Nancy asked.

"I'm okay, why?"

"You're grinning that infamous Kent megawatt smile."

The giddiness slid to the tiled floor. "I'm sorry, it's all just—"

"I know," Nancy said, giving me a look that was like a hand pat. "It's too strange, I know." She cleared her throat. "First of all, we want to make sure you're comfortable here. You need anything, just let us know. The more information you can give us right now, the better, but you can leave at any time, that's not a problem, either."

"Whatever you need."

"Okay, great, thank you," she said. "Um, okay. I want to get the annoying stuff out of the way first. The crap stuff. If your wife was indeed abducted – and we don't know that, but if it comes to that – we want to catch the guy, and when we catch the guy, we want to nail him, hard. No way out. No wiggle room."

"Right."

"So we have to rule you out real quick, real easy. So the guy can't come back and say we didn't rule you out, you know what I mean?"

I nodded mechanically. I didn't really know what she meant, but I wanted to seem as cooperative as possible. "Whatever you need."

"We don't want to freak you out," Ethan added. "We just want to cover all the bases."

"Fine by me." _It's always the husband,_ I thought. _Everyone knows it's always the husband, so why can't they just say it: We suspect you because you are the husband, and it's always the husband. Just watch _Dateline or 48 Hours.

"Okay, great, Clark," Nancy said. "First let's get a swab of the inside of your cheek so we can rule out all of the DNA in the house that isn't yours. Would that be okay?"

_Fµ©k._

"Sure."

_I'm just going to be stealing that sample later anyway._

"I'd also like to take a quick sweep of your hands for gun shot residue. Again, just in case—"

"Wait, wait, wait. Have you found something that makes you think my wife was—"

"Nonono, Clark," Ethan interrupted. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat on it backward. I wondered if cops actually did that. Or did some clever actor do that, and then cops began doing it because they'd seen the actors playing cops do that and it looked cool?

"It's just smart protocol," Ethan continued. "We try to cover every base: Check your hands, get a swab, and if we could check out your truck too …"

"Of course. Like I said, whatever you need."

"Thank you, Clark. I really appreciate it. Sometimes guys, they make things hard for us just because they can."

I was exactly the opposite. My father had infused my childhood with unspoken blame; he was the kind of man who skulked around looking for things to be angry at. This had turned Chloe defensive and extremely unlikely to take unwarranted sh!+. It had turned me into a knee-jerk suckup to authority. Mom, Dad, teachers: _Whatever makes your job easier, sir or madam._ I craved a constant stream of approval. "You'd literally lie, cheat, and steal – hell, kill – to convince people you are a good guy," Chloe once said. We were in line for gyros not far from Chloe's old Metropolis apartment – that's how well I remember the moment – and I lost my appetite because it was so completely true and I'd never realized it, and even as she was saying it, I thought:_ I will never forget this, this is one of those moments that will be lodged in my brain forever._

We made small talk, Nancy, Ethan and I, about the July Fourth fireworks and the weather, while my hands were tested for gunshot residue and the slick inside of my cheek was cotton-swabbed. Pretending it was perfectly normal, a trip to the dentist.

Except I'd never been to the dentist with my perfect teeth.

Because I wasn't normal.

When it was done, Nancy put another cup of coffee in front of me, squeezed my shoulder. "I'm sorry about that. Worst part of the job. You think you're up to a few questions now? It'd really help us."

"Yes, definitely, fire away."

She placed a slim digital tape recorder on the table in front of me. "You mind? This way you won't have to answer the same questions over and over and over …" She wanted to tape me so I'd be nailed to one story. _I should call a lawyer,_ I thought, _but only guilty people need lawyers, _so I nodded: _No problem._

"So: Lois," Nancy said. "You two been living here how long?"

"We've been back in Smallville just about two years."

"And she's originally from Metropolis."

"No. She's originally from all over. Army brat. Grew up on bases across the globe."

"She work, got a job?" Ethan said.

"No. She was an investigative reporter. She was my partner. _Lane-Kent_ and _Kent_."

"Yeah, yeah, truth, justice and the American way. We all remember quite well who _Ms. Lane's_ favorite crimefighter was."

_Not those fµ©king rumors again._

"It's _Mrs._ Lane-_Kent_ or just _Mrs. Kent._"

"Easy _Mr. Kent_. Don't make me tell you again. I'm asking you nicely."

_Don't make me tell you again. Next time I won't be so nice._

"Lois was passionate about fighting for certain values and beliefs and standing up for what she believed in– _is _passionate. She still _is_." I guffawed uncomfortably at my gaffe. _Present tense $$hole._ "But passionate can't beat free, which is what the internet basically is."

"Then what happened?"

I shrugged. "Then we moved back here. She's just kind of staying at home right now."

"Oh! You guys got kids, then?" Nancy chirped, as if she had discovered good news.

"No."

"Oh. So then what does she do most days?"

That was my question too. Lois was once a woman who did a little of everything, all the time. When we first moved in together after we got engaged, she'd made an intense study of French cooking, displaying Julia Child-like skills with an inspired boeuf bourguignon. My favorite dish. For her thirty-fourth birthday, we flew to Barcelona, and she stunned me by rolling off trills of conversational Spanish, learned in months of secret lessons. My wife had a brilliant, popping brain, a greedy curiosity, an intrepid investigative nature. But her obsessions tended to be fueled by competition: She needed to dazzle men and make women jealous that they were not her: _Of course Lois can cook French cuisine and speak fluent Spanish and run marathons in stillettos and trick crime lords into revealing hideouts and fly a stolen military helicopter during a getaway and look like a runway model doing it. _She needed to be _Loquacious Lois_, all the time. Some invented children's book character based on herself. Here in Smallville, the women shop at Target, they make diligent, comforting meals, they laugh about how little high school Spanish they remember. Competition doesn't interest them. Lois's relentless achieving is greeted with open-palmed acceptance and maybe a bit of pity. It was about the worst outcome possible for my competitive wife: A town of contented Punch Bowl Maddies.

"She has a lot of hobbies," I said.

"Anything worrying you?" Nancy asked, looking worried. "You're not concerned about drugs or drinking? I'm not speaking ill of your wife. A lot of housewives, more than you'd guess, they pass the day that way. The days, they get long when you're by yourself. And if the drinking turns to drugs – and I'm not talking heroin but even prescription painkillers – well, there are some pretty awful characters selling around here right now."

"The drug trade has gotten bad," Ethan said. "We've had a bunch of police layoffs – one fifth of the force, and we were tight to begin with. I mean, it's _bad,_ we're overrun."

"Had a housewife, nice lady, get a tooth knocked out last month over some Oxycontin," Nancy prompted.

"No, Lois might have a glass of wine or something, but not drugs."

Nancy eyed me; this was clearly not the answer she wanted. "She have some good friends here? We'd like to call some of them, just make sure. No offense. Sometimes a spouse is the last to know when drugs are involved. People get ashamed, especially women."

Friends. In Metropolis, Lois made and shed friends weekly; they were like her projects. She'd get intensely excited about them: Dinah who gave her singing lessons and had a wicked good voice like a canary (Lois spent some time in Massachusetts on an army base when she was younger; I loved the very occasional times she got all New England on me: _wicked good_); Diana, the retired nurse who ran a fashion boutique. But then I'd ask about Dinah or Diana a month later, and Lois would look at me like I was an alien. Or something.

Then there were the men who were always rattling behind Lois, eager to do the husbandly things that her husband failed to do or was never around to do. Jimmy. Jeff. Steve. Ron. Men who she swore were her friends, just good friends. Lois kept them at exactly an arm's distance – far enough away that I couldn't get too annoyed, close enough that she could crook a finger and they'd do her bidding.

In Smallville … good God, I really didn't know. It only occurred to me just then. _You truly are an $$hole_, I thought. Two years we'd been here, and after the initial flurry of meet-and-greets, those manic first months, Lois had no one she regularly saw. She had my mom, who was now dead, and me – and our main form of conversation was attack and rebuttal. When we'd been back home for a year, I'd asked her fake jokingly: "And how are you liking Smallville, Mrs. Kent?" "Littleville, you mean?" she'd replied. I refused to ask her the reference, but I knew it was an insult she'd borrowed from Perry.

"She has a few good friends, but they're mostly back in Metropolis."

"Her folks?"

"Again, it's just her dad, and he lives mostly at Fort Ryan on the base. He has a summer residence at Crater Lake. And he owns an apartment in Metropolis."

"And you still haven't called him?" Nancy asked, a bemused smile on her face.

"I've been doing everything _else_ you've been asking me to do. I haven't had a chance." I'd signed away permission to trace credit cards and ATMs and track Lois's cell phone, I'd handed over Chloe's cell number and the name of Sandy, the widow at The Bar, who could presumably attest to the time I arrived.

"Baby of the family." She shook her head. "You really do remind me of my little brother." A beat. "That's a compliment, I swear."

"She dotes on him," Ethan said, scribbling in a notebook. "Okay, so you left the house at about seven-thirty a.m., and you showed up at The Bar at about noon, and in between, you were at the beach."

"At Crater Lake. I sometimes bring my coffee and the paper and just sit. Gotta make the most of summer."

No, I hadn't talked to anyone at the beach. No, no one saw me.

"It's a quiet place midweek," Ethan allowed.

If the police talked to anyone who knew me, they'd quickly learn that I rarely went to the beach at Crater Lake and that I never sometimes brought my coffee to just enjoy the morning. I told the police that because it had been Lois's idea, for me to go sit in the spot where I could be alone and watch the lake where we got married and ponder our life together. She'd said this to me this morning, after we'd eaten her crepes. She leaned forward on the table and said, "I know we are having a tough time. I still love you so much, Clark, and I know I have a lot of things to work on. I want to be a good wife to you, and I want you to be my husband and be happy. But you need to decide what you want."

She'd clearly been practicing the speech; she smiled proudly as she said it. And even as my wife was offering me this kindness, I was thinking, _Of course she has to stage-manage this. She wants the image of me and the stillness of the lake water, my hair ruffling in the breeze as I look out onto the horizon and ponder our life together. I can't just go to Dunkin' Donuts.  
_  
_You need to decide what you want._ Unfortunately for Lois, I had decided already.

Nancy looked up brightly from her notes: "Can you tell me what your wife's blood type is?" she asked.

"Uh, no, I don't know."

"You don't know your wife's blood type?"

"Maybe O?" I guessed.

Nancy frowned, then made a drawn-out yoga-like sound. "Okay, Clark, here are the things _we _are doing to help." She listed them: Lois's cell was being monitored, her photo circulated, her credit cards tracked. Known sex offenders in the area were being interviewed. Our sparse neighborhood was being canvassed. Our home phone was tapped, in case any ransom calls came in.

I wasn't sure what to say now. I raked my memory for the lines: What does the husband say at this point in the movie? Depends on whether he's guilty or innocent.

"I can't say that reassures me. Are you – is this an abduction, or a missing persons case, or what exactly is going on?" I knew the statistics, knew them from the same TV show I was starring in: If the first forty-eight hours didn't turn up something in a case, it was likely to go unsolved. The first forty-eight hours were crucial. "I mean, my wife is gone. My wife: _is gone_!" I realized it was the first time I'd said it the way it should have been said: panicked and angry. My dad was a man of infinite varieties of bitterness, rage, distaste. In my lifelong struggle to avoid becoming him, I'd developed an inability to demonstrate much negative emotion at all. It was another thing that made me seem like a dick – my stomach could be all oiled eels, and you would get nothing from my face and less from my words. It was a constant problem: too much control or no control at all.

"Clark, we are taking this _extremely_ seriously," Nancy said. "The lab guys are over at your place as we speak, and that will give us more information to go on. Right now, the more you can tell us about your wife, the better. What is she like?"

_She's bossy, she's rude, she's stuck up. She's so… Lois. _

_She's…perfect.  
_  
"What is she like _how_?" I asked.

"Give me an idea of her personality," Nancy prompted. "Like, what did you get her for your anniversary? Jewelry?"

"I hadn't gotten anything quite yet," I said. "I was going to do it this afternoon." I waited for her to laugh and say "baby of the family" again, but she didn't.

"Okay. Well, then, tell me about her. Is she outgoing? Is she – I don't know how to say this – is she Metropolis-y? Like what might come off to some as rude? Might rub people the wrong way?"

"I don't know. She's not a never-met-a-stranger kind of person, but she's not – not abrasive enough to make someone … hurt her."

Unless they wanted to hurt _him._

This was my eleventh lie. The Lois of today _was _abrasive enough to want to hurt, sometimes. Abrasive enough that a billionaire megalomaniacal power-mad business magnate turned leader of the free world, or a being with a 12th-level intellect, or prank-pulling 5th dimension imp _would _want to hurt her. Not being satisfied with just snatching her to mess with _him._ They would do it. Now.

I speak specifically of the Lois of today, who was only remotely like the woman I fell in love with nearly two decades ago. It had been an awful fairy-tale reverse transformation. The _once upon a time_ had been and always will be great. But the _they lived happily ever after_ was seriously in question. Over the course of the last five years, since we finally said "I do", the old Lois, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and out stepped this new, brittle, bitter Lois. My wife was no longer my wife but a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, _nervous fingers._ Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of _solving Lois._ When I'd hold up the bloody stumps, she'd sigh and turn to her secret mental notebook on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings. My old Lois, damn, she was fun. She was funny. She made me laugh. I'd forgotten that. And she laughed. From the bottom of her throat, from right behind that small finger-shaped hollow, which is the best place to laugh from. She released her grievances like handfuls of birdseed: They are there, and they are gone.

She was not the thing she became, the thing I feared most: an angry woman. A woman with a grudge. A woman holding something against me. A woman I had wronged in some way. I was not good with those women. They brought something out in me that was unsavory. Dark.

"She bossy?" Ethan asked. "Take-charge?"

I thought of Lois's calendar, the one that went three years into the future, and if you looked a year ahead, you would actually find appointments: dermatologist, dentist, vet. "She's a planner – she doesn't, you know, wing anything. She likes to make lists and check things off. Get things done. That's why this doesn't make sense—"

"That can drive you crazy," Nancy said sympathetically. "If you're not that type. You seem very B-personality. Mild-mannered."

"I'm a little more laid-back, I guess," I said. Then I added the part I was supposed to add: "We round each other out."

I looked at the clock on the wall, and Nancy touched my hand.

"Hey, why don't you go ahead and give a call to Lois's dad? I'm sure he'd appreciate it."

It was past midnight. Lois's dad went to sleep at nine p.m.; he was strangely boastful about this early bedtime. Must be a military thing. He'd be deep asleep by now, so this would be an urgent middle-of-the-night call. Cell went off at 8:45 always, so Sam Lane would have to walk from his bed all the way to the end of the hall to pick up the old heavy phone; he'd be fumbling with his glasses, fussy with the table lamp. He'd be telling himself all the reasons not to worry about a late-night phone call, all the harmless reasons the phone might be ringing.

I dialed twice and hung up before I let the call ring through. When I did, Sam answered, his deep voice buzzing my ears. I'd only gotten to "Sam, this is Clark" when I lost it.

"What is it, Clark?"

I took a breath.

"Is it Lois? Tell me."

"I uh – I'm sorry I should have called—"

"Tell me, goddamn it!"

"We c-can't find Lois," I stuttered.

"You can't _find _Lois?"

"I don't know—"

"Lois is missing?"

"We don't know that for sure, we're still—"

"Since when?"

"We're not sure. I left this morning, a little after seven—"

"And you waited till now to call me?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to—"

"Jesus Christ. I played tennis tonight. Tennis, and I could have been … My God. Are the police involved? You've notified them?"

"I'm at the station right now."

"Put on whoever's in charge, Clark. Please."

Like a kid, I went to fetch Ethan. _My father-in-law wants to talk to you._

Phoning the General made it official. The emergency – _Lois is gone _– was spreading to the outside.

I was heading back to the interview room when I heard my father's voice. Sometimes, in particularly shameful moments, I heard his voice in my head. But this was my father's voice, here. His words emerged in wet bubbles like something from a rancid bog. _B!t©h b!t©h b!t©h._ My father, out of his mind, had taken to flinging the word at any woman who even vaguely annoyed him: _b!t©h b!t©h b!t©h_ _._ I peered inside a conference room, and there he sat on a bench against the wall. He had been a handsome man once, intense and cleft-chinned. _Jarringly dreamy_ was how Lana's aunt Nell had described him. Now he sat muttering at the floor, his blond hair matted, trousers muddy and arms scratched, as if he'd fought his way through a thornbush. A line of spittle glimmered down his chin like a snail's trail, and he was flexing and unflexing arm muscles that had not yet gone to seed. A tense female officer sat next to him, her lips in an angry pucker, trying to ignore him: _B!t©h b!t©h b!t©h I told you b!t©h._

"What's going on?" I asked her. "This is my father."

"You got our call?"

"What call?"

"To come get your father." She overenunciated, as if I were a big dumb...ten-year-old.

"I – My wife is missing. I've been _here _most of the night."

She stared at me, not connecting in the least. I could see her debating whether to sacrifice her leverage and apologize, inquire. Then my father started up again, _b!t©h b!t©h b!t©h, _and she chose to keep the leverage.

"Sir, Old Orchard has been trying to contact you all day. Your father wandered out a fire exit early this morning. He's got a few scratches and scrapes, as you can see, but no damage. We picked him up a few hours ago, walking down River Road, disoriented. We've been trying to reach you."

"I've been right here," I said. "Right goddamn next door, how did no one put this together?"

_B!t©h b!t©h b!t©h, _said my dad.

"Sir, please don't take that tone with me."

_B!t©h b!t©h b!t©h._

Nancy ordered an officer – male – to drive my dad back to the nursing home so I could finish up with them. We stood on the stairs outside the police station, watched him get settled into the car, still muttering. The entire time he never registered my presence. When they drove off, he didn't even look back.

"You guys not close anymore?" she asked.

"We are the definition of not close anymore."

The police finished with their questions and hustled me into a squad car at about two a.m. with advice to get a good night's sleep and return at eleven a.m. for a 12-noon press conference.  
I didn't ask if I could go home. I had them take me to Chloe's, because I knew she'd stay up and have a drink with me, fix me a sandwich. It was, pathetically, all I wanted right then: my sister to fix me a sandwich and not ask me any questions.

"Why are the police involved?" Chloe offered as I ate. "Go get her yourself. Like you always used to."

"I can't hear her," I said dully.

_"What!"  
_  
_"I. Can't. Hear. Her."_

"What the fµ©k does that mean you can't hear her! You know that sound anywhere. It's the one sound above all others that you can pick out and tune into. Clark, this is really fµ©king serious."

"I know, Chlo."

"Act like it, okay, _Kal-El?_ Don't fµ©king _myuhmyuhmyuh._" It was a thick-tongued noise, the noise she always made to convey my indecisiveness, accompanied by a dazed rolling of the eyes and the dusting off of my real name.

A reminder of the name _she _gave _him._

No one who has my face needs to be called _that._

She handed me a tumbler of Scotch. "And drink this, but only this. You don't want liquor on your breath tomorrow. Even if it doesn't affect you it won't look good to the cops. Where the fµ©k could she be? God, I feel sick to my stomach." She poured herself a glass, gulped, then tried to sip, pacing around the kitchen. "Aren't you worried, Clark? That some guy, like, saw her on the street and just decided to take her and do things to her? Bashed her on the head and—"

I started. My eyes nearly set my sister on fire. "Why did you say _bashed her on the head and do things to her,_ what the fµ©k is that!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to paint a picture, I just … I don't know, I just keep thinking. About some crazy person." She splashed some more Scotch into her tumbler.

"Speaking of _crazy_ people," I said, "Dad got out again today, they found him wandering down River Road. He's back at Old Orchard now."

She shrugged: _okay._ It was the third time in six months that our dad had slipped out. Chloe was lighting a cigarette, her thoughts still on Lois. "I mean, isn't there something you can do?" she asked.

"Jesus, Chlo! You really need me to feel more fµ©king impotent than I do right now?" I snapped. "I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. There's no "When Your Wife Goes Missing 101" when the usual suspects don't factor into the scenario anymore. They're long gone. Just like _he_ is. The police told me I could leave. I left. I'm just doing what they tell me."

"Of course you are," murmured Chloe, who had a long-stymied mission to turn me into a rebel. It wouldn't take. I was the kid in high school who made curfew; I was the reporter who hit my deadlines, even the fake ones I made up myself. I respect rules, because if you follow rules, things go smoothly, usually.

"Fµ©k, Chlo, I'm back at the station in a few hours, okay? Can you please just be nice to me for a second? I'm scared sh!+less."

We had a five-second staring contest, then Chloe filled up my glass one more time, an apology. She sat down next to me, put a hand on my shoulder.

"Poor Lois," she said.


End file.
